We’re very proud to say that Orán Timoney, a member of our first Youth Leadership Team and now an AsIAm Youth Ambassador, scooped a Special Award at this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in the RDS! He was awarded the RCSI Award for “Project with the Best Impact on Human Health”. His winning project was entitled “Categorising CVD patient risk using machine learning tools“. Orán has written about his project and his experience at the exhibition here, so you can learn about his journey to become an award-winning young scientist!

Hello, my name is Orán. I was a member of the AsIAm Youth Leadership team from September 2015 and I am now part of the Ambassador Team.

My journey with the AsIAm Team has been brilliant from the very start. Learning the stories that other members had and using our experience as people who have autism to help others within communities within Ireland is something amazing to think about.

From a room of five people to a large national group which runs multiple events and conventions every year is an amazing thing to be a part of. Every year, more and more people become aware of our work, helping people with autism to feel included within the community.

Recently, I was involved in a summer Nuffield Research Placement. This is a placement you can apply for when you are 16 or 17 years old to gain experience in the relevant field you plan to study in.

I was fortunate enough to get a placement with the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine, which is located in the C-TRIC research building beside the Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.

I was tasked to find the factors which differentiate between low-risk, medium-risk and very high-risk cardiovascular disease patients. This project was particularly important to me as my great uncle had suffered a heart attack just two weeks before and thereafter diagnosed with Cardiovascular Disease. Finding a positive outcome of this project was important to me as I could help others, especially people within my family and area which were affected by such conditions.

Over six weeks, I found thirty factors which were effective in differentiating low, medium, and very high-risk patients. Utilising these factors, I used machine learning models, which basically are algorithms designed to learn the correlation between each degree of risk. The only problem with this is that my final set of patients that I used to achieve this had a size of 200 people. Machine learning models have an intrinsic problem that the model is as good as the data being used. As the number of patients within my data was very low, the models being created would suffer in accuracy when used to predict with larger sets of patients. I had to research methods that would limit the effect of this issue throughout.

I created a script within the Python programming language that would use multiple machine learning models and describe the conditions that they were carried out on to provide a repeatable test. This would allow me to test multiple times if the model was specific to the data I had or that the all-important generalisation was made. After the specific conditions were found, I automated these models than to go through large database files when needed and produce accurate reports on each model used.

My supervisor Dr Steven Watterson was keen to find out the results and work of my project, in which the findings will help him take on his work further on into the future.

With the end of my project, I was invited to a day in which Nuffield Placement participants were celebrated for their work. We all had created posters and report books detailing our methods and outcomes of each project. A few weeks after this event, the placement organisers sent a letter encouraging me to send my work to local science competitions.

In fact, this is the reason why I applied for the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition as a contestant. The four days which I attended were very exciting throughout, if not a little daunting. As a person with Autism, I can say that the venue was packed with people at all times and you had very little time to yourself if you entered as an individual. You could easily get overstimulated with the lights, sound and activity of the place. Despite those issues, it was still a great event. Looking around at other projects, you can see how diverse the topics being covered. From medicine to farming, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. There was something around for everyone.

The judging took place from Wednesday to Friday, with at least one judge coming to you each day. I was nervous at first explaining my project, but after Thursday with dozens of visitors asking me questions, I felt that I gained confidence in myself and my work in presenting it in the best way possible.

On Friday night, we had the awards ceremony. The intro sequence was like something from the Eurovision Song Contest, with lights, cameras and effects throughout. There were some big awards handed out. A trip to America, a visit to the RTE studios and other various special awards and monetary prizes were handed out.

I was shocked when I was announced for the award from the Royal College of Surgeons titled: “Best Impact on Human Health”. It was exhilarating to walk on the stage and to be recognised for the work that I had done leading to this event. This, in turn, has helped me to become more confident in my work and to realise other careers I could be a part of.

Returning back home on Saturday night, I was welcomed with joy and cheer from my family and also from the local community. This has made me realise that I could pursue a career in data science and possibly to contribute further to my project in the future.

I don’t have any real plans at the moment for my project due to me preparing for my A level exams in the summer, but I have been invited to the Royal College of Surgeons to present my work in March. I plan to go to Ulster or Queen’s University to study computer science, and possibly further on to a role in Data science.

This has been an amazing journey, both with AsIAm, with Nuffield, BT Young Scientists, Holy Cross College and the Royal College of Surgeons. It’s been brilliant, and I hope to see you all in the future.

This is also a story that can show that people with any disability, no matter what they have can achieve what they set out to do in life and help others in the best way they can.

Thank you.

This is one individual’s opinion and experience. It does not necessarily reflect AsIAm’s views and positions as an organisation. If you’d like to blog for AsIAm.ie, get in touch by emailing blogs@asiam.ie.