The Undergraduate Awards (UA) has announced the winners of the 2016 programme, including a Regional Winner and a Highly Commended Entrant from St Mary’s University College Belfast.

Cited as the ultimate champion of high-potential undergraduates, and often referred to as a “junior Nobel Prize”, Undergraduate Awards is the world’s largest international academic awards programme, recognising excellent research and original work across the sciences, the humanities, business studies and the creative arts.

The Undergraduate Awards received a record number of submissions in the 2016 programme totalling a massive 5,514 papers from undergraduates in 244 different institutions and from 121 nationalities. The Global Winner is awarded to the highest-performing paper within its category, and the Regional Winners are drawn from the highest-performing Highly Commended papers from a particular student’s region, by category. The seven regions of the UA 2016 programme are the Island of Ireland, Europe, USA and Canada, Latin America, Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Regional Winner, Breda O'Kane, with her paper Grammar Wars: Recent UK Debates on the Relationship between Good Grammar and Good Writing, was rated as the highest-performing paper in the Island of Ireland in the Education category.

The Highly Commended Entrant from St Mary’s University College is Sean McCullagh, also from the Education category.

Speaking about this year’s Winners and Highly Commended Entrants, CEO of The Undergraduate Awards Louise Hodgson said: “This is a huge achievement for St Mary’s University College and its students. UA received the highest number of submissions to date with only the best papers making it through the judging process. The competition was extremely tough, and the judges were astounded at the high quality of undergraduate research in the programme this year. Congratulations to this year’s successful entrants.”

Highly Commended Entrants have been invited to meet their fellow award recipients at the annual UA Global Summit taking place in Dublin on 8-11 November. The attendees will be addressed by NASA Astronaut Dr Mae Jemison, Shiza Shahid of the Malala Fund, MacArthur Fellow Kyle Abrahams and many more speakers and facilitators.


About The Undergraduate Awards
The Undergraduate Awards is the world's largest international academic awards programme recognising innovation and excellence at undergraduate level. Cited as the ultimate champion for high-potential undergraduates, UA identifies leading creative thinkers through their undergraduate coursework and provides top performing students with the support, network and opportunities they require to raise their profiles and further their career paths.

For more information, contact: Lara Coyle, Communications Manager, The Undergraduate Awards +353 (0) 1 4415882.