Dynamic Galway duo’s team are head and shoulders above the rest
A team of five students – two of them from Galway – have been announced as the winners at this year’s Stripe Young Scientist Business Bootcamp.
Deepta Suresh from Dominican College, Taylor’s Hill in Galway city and Eve Kennedy from Presentation College, Headford were joined by Brian McCabe, Paddy Corcoran and Rachel Coghlan as Best Group at the inaugural ootcamp, for their project Reforma: The Reusable Crumple Zone.
All 30 students taking part were immersed in hands-on workshops and in person learning sessions, including a range of new workshops introduced for 2026.
The winning project uses shape memory alloys to create vehicle crumple zones that improve passenger safety by absorbing impact energy and returning to their original shape. This reduces vehicle damage, repair costs, and automotive waste.
The Stripe Business Bootcamp, delivered in partnership with NovaUCD, enables students to further develop their entrepreneurial skills through an expanded series of workshops covering presentation techniques, business pitching, and start up fundamentals, guided by experts from leading science and technology fields as well as home grown successful Irish businesses.
The participating students and their exceptional projects were evaluated across multiple rounds of judging by a panel of industry leading experts, including Dr Tony Scott, Co-founder of the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (YSTE); Lucy Molan, Head of EMEA startups at Stripe; Amy Neale, Partner at Delta Partners; and Niamh Donnelly, Co-founder of Akara.
These students did not just demonstrate the strength of their ideas, they showed their ability to communicate, work as part of a team, adapt and think like entrepreneurs
Speaking on the week and judging process, Professor Pat Guiry, Chairperson of the YSTE Board, described the standard as ‘exceptionally high’.
“These students did not just demonstrate the strength of their ideas, they showed their ability to communicate, work as part of a team, adapt and think like entrepreneurs,” he said.
“The judging panel had a tough task in selecting a winner, and all students should be proud of what they have achieved over the week,” he added.
Liam Cronin, Director of Innovation, UCD, said they were delighted to partner with Stripe in delivering the inaugural Stripe Business Bootcamp - and to enable the participating students engage with members of the UCD research community relevant to their projects.
Stripe’s ties to the startup community are at the core of the Business Bootcamp. The programme supports aspiring entrepreneurs on their journey to building and scaling new businesses.
Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison started out as young Irish entrepreneurs, and Patrick won the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in 2005.
Beyond the bootcamp, Stripe’s support for the wider YSTE community continues on the global stage. This month, the current Stripe Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year – with students from the other three top 2026 projects – will travel to San Francisco for Stripe Sessions.
They will showcase their exhibitions projects to an audience of international technology leaders and meet with industry experts.
For more information on Stripe’s Business Bootcamp, and next year’s Stripe YSTE taking place from January 6 to 9 2027, see https://stripeyste.com.