On Friday, 13 September, numerous students were honoured at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS), with Special Donated Prizes sponsored by EIROforum. Every year, EUCYS awards the scientific achievements of students aged 14 to 20 from Europe and associated countries, supporting their path towards scientific careers and fostering cooperation and cultural exchange.

EUCYS celebrated its 35th Anniversary in this year’s European City of Science of Katowice, which gathered 150 students from almost 40 different countries. An international jury awarded 13 Core Prizes in addition to honorary awards and Special Donated Prizes.

The awardees of the EIROforum Special Donated prizes were:

• Delyan Boychev, from Bulgaria, for the project “Synthetic image detection via supervised contrastive learning”, awarded by the European Space Agency;
• Maja Leber and Julius Gutjahr, from Germany, for the project “New insights on antibubbles”, awarded by EUROfusion;
• Federico Bergo, from Italy, for the project “DSUP Project”, awarded by ESRF, the European Synchrotron;
• Nathaniel Kashani, from Israel, for the project “T cell engineering as a treatment for IgE-mediated allergy”, awarded by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory;
• Manu Kiiskilä from Finland, for the project “Evolving Deep Architectures: a new blend of CNNs and transformers without pre-training dependencies”, awarded by the European Southern Observatory;
• Nikolas Pippal, from Czechia, for the project “Intraoperative Brain Tumor Detection Using Raman Spectroscopy Data and Machine Learning”, awarded by the Institut Laue Langevin;
• Jakob Quinten Shildhauer, from Switzerland, for the project “Seeing Sound – A New Method For Measuring Vibrations With Cameras”, awarded by European XFEL.
• Leon Verreijt, from the Netherlands, for the project “Designing, building, and testing a multi-wire proportional chamber”, awarded by CERN.

All winners will have the unique opportunity to spend up to a week at the premises of the respective awarding EIROforum organisation. There, students have the chance to visit the facilities and see research conducted first-hand. Xavier Barcons, Director General of the European Southern Observatory, which is chairing EIROforum this year, expressed his congratulations to all the winners and participants in EUCYS. “EIROforum is delighted to support these young researchers in reaching their full potential. The importance and promotion of scientific collaboration, which is among the key principles of EIROforum, cannot be overstated and these young people, through their continuous drive to gain new knowledge and scientific excellence, are a testament for the future of research in Europe and worldwide.”