The winner of this year's BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition has returned to a hero's welcome at his school in Co Limerick.
Seán O'Sullivan won the event with his entry 'VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era'.
The project explores the development of a new artificial intelligence (AI) detection system that uses past examples of an author's writing to detect if AI was used to generate a piece of work.
He arrived at Coláiste Chiaráin in Croom this morning to huge applause from his fellow pupils and teachers.
The fifth year student said the whole excitement of his win is just sinking in, and it was surreal when he heard his name called as winner as the standard of projects this year was incredible.
It was even more surreal, he said, when he got huge cheers from his fellow students on his return to school.
Seán described the win as an incredible honour for his school.
He said he is looking forward to finishing school and going to college and said the BTYSTE win has opened up a lot of avenues for him in the future.
Sean's dad, Ger O'Sullivan, is the school's principal and described his son's achievement as absolutely phenomenal for the school community.
He said there has been a huge outpouring of messages of support since the win was announced on Friday, including from other schools across the country.
Mr O'Sullivan said there is a huge emphasis on STEM at Coláiste Chiaráin, which is paying off.
He said for him as school principal the win is remarkable, but as Sean's father, it is just incredible.
Mr O'Sullivan said he has lived with this project with Seán for the past number of years and they have spent many hundreds of hours talking about it.
It has been a remarkable achievement for his hard work and his endeavour and they are all delighted for him, he added.
