Damini Kumar: I wanted to set out to invent a new product. I wanted to be a famous inventor in the UK, in London, and someone came up to me and said to me, ‘If you invent a non-drip teapot you’ll make it’, and I was like 'Really? A non-drip teapot, is that really a problem for people?' and the more I researched it the more I realised that actually for the last fifty years there’s been scientists, engineers and designers trying to solve the problem of dripping teapots.
Donagh O'Mahony: They are seriously considering transmitting energy from space using laser or microwave technology. So you'd have solar cells up on the Moon, solar panels, massive areas collecting sunlight nonstop and beaming it down to Earth.
Cian Ó Mathúna: We are working on an idea of a swallowable pill for gut analysis. So you can swallow this pill, it will go through the gut and it will wirelessly communicate to a personal digital assistant or a mobile phone that the doctor has in order to determine what's the condition of the gut. And this is much easier than you having to go into hospital and get a laparoscopy or a gastroscopy. In fact here’s one that I swallowed yesterday [shows pill]…I'm joking, they are disposed of carefully.
Sheila Nolan: Hey guys, how’s things? OK, I'm Sheila. I'm a third-year mechanical engineering student in UCD. I'm going to speak today about energy, the challenges and the opportunities available in the energy sector. So where do you guys come in? How many of you do science? [Show of hands by audience] Really good, that’s cool!
John Kirby: My name is John Kirby and I'm also an engineering student in UCD, I'm an electrical engineering student and I was a member of Energy Needs Ireland as well. So as Sheila mentioned to you, we need to get away from using fossil fuels and we need to move to more cleaner and sustainable sources of energy. So this involves changing every sector from what powers our cars, what heats our homes and to what generates our electricity. So if any of you do decide to go on and study science or engineering at third level you’ll have to get familiar with renewable energy and climate change because it's very important now.
Question from audience: When is the Sun going to die?
Sheila Nolan (laughing): In about seventy billion years, so nothing to worry about.