Fionn Ferreira | |
|---|---|
 Headshot of Fionn Ferreira on the Irish Coastline, July 2021 | |
| Born | 2000or2001(age 22–23) [1] |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Website | https://www.fionnferreira.com/ |
Fionn Miguel Eckardt Ferreira (from Ballydehob, County Cork, Ireland) is an Irish inventor, chemistry student and Forbes 30 under 30 listee. He is known for his invention of a method to remove microplastic particles from water using a natural ferrofluid mixture. [2] [3]
Fionn Ferreira, whose full name is Fionn Miguel Eckardt Ferreira, [4] was born in Cork to boat-builder and modeller Anne Eckardt, from Germany and West Cork, [5] and boat-builder Rui Ferreira from Portugal, who had met in the UK in 1994 and settled in Ballydehob, County Cork. [6] [7] He was brought up in Ballydehob and attended St James' primary school in Durrus and subsequently Schull Community College in Schull, completing school at the age of 18 in 2019. [1]
Ferreira spent part of his childhood kayaking around remote coastal areas of Ireland with his dog India, noticing an increasing amount of plastic washing up on the coastline. He created a methodology to quantify and collect plastic pollution, with a focus on microplastics. He built several inventions using LEGO, bits of wood and some microcontrollers to test for these microplastics. [8] He entered the national science fair, the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, three times, with two of his projects being Let Sanils do the cleaning, An investigation into the antioxidant concentration of different berries using the Briggs-Rauscher reaction in conjunction with a photometer and An investigation into the removal of microplastics from water using ferrofluids. [9] Ferreira worked as a curator at Schull's planetarium. [2]
Ferreira designed and tested a method to remove microplastics from water, following what he described as thousands of failed attempts. Ferreira has stated that he was inspired by an article by Fermilab physicist Arden Warner, who developed a new approach to cleaning up oil spills, using magnetic principles, [10] and made a device that uses a magnet-based method to remove the particles from water with extraction rates of 87% (+/- 1.1%). [11] The highest extraction rates observed in Fionn's experiments were for polyesters. [11] He first exhibited the project at the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2018 where he was awarded the Intel Award, best in category, Intellectual Ventures Award and a first-place award. [12] Ferreira subsequently exhibited at ISEF 2018 winning the 1st place American Chemical Society award, 2nd place award in Chemistry, 1st place for Drug Chemical and associated technologies, a scholarship to the University of Arizona and a certificate of honourable mention by the American Statistical Association. [11]
In 2019, Ferreira exhibited at the 2019 Google Science Fair winning the global grand prize award of $50,000. [12]
In autumn 2019, Ferreira started a BSc in Chemistry at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and graduated in 2022 with Cum Laude. [13] Currently, Ferreira is following a MSc in Chemistry at the University of Groningen. [14]
In 2020, Ferreira founded a business, Fionn & Co., focused on microplastic removal technology. [15] [3] In 2020 and 2021 his work was featured by the global campaign by Hewlett-Packard: For every dream. [16]
In 2018 the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a minor planet after Ferreira, following his being awarded 2nd place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. [2] In 2021 he was named a National Geographic Society Young Explorer; he has since been working on a new platform for youth in the space of invention with the help of the funding from the society. [17] In 2021, he was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 listee in the Science and Healthcare category. [3] In September 2021 Ferreira was awarded a Premio Internationale Giuseppe Sciacca award for his conservation and ecological efforts. [18]
Ferreira has spoken at several events, including: [19]
Ferreira has been awarded: [19]
A science fair or engineering fair is an event hosted by a school that offers students the opportunity to experience the practices of science and engineering for themselves. In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards makes experiencing the practices of science and engineering one of the three pillars of science education. Students perform some sort of research and then present their experiment in a poster session or other display format.
Ballydehob is a coastal village in the southwest of County Cork, Ireland. It is located on the R592 regional road, at a junction with the N71 national secondary road.
Schull or Skull is a town on the south-west coast of County Cork in Ireland.
The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is an annual science fair in the United States. It is owned and administered by the Society for Science, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. Each May, more than 1800 students from roughly 75 countries and territories compete in the fair for scholarships, tuition grants, internships, scientific field trips and the grand prizes, including one $75,000 and two $50,000 college scholarships. All prizes together amount to over $8,000,000. Two major awards ceremonies are the Special Awards Organization Presentation and the Grand Awards Ceremony. The International Science and Engineering Fair was founded in 1950 by Science Service and was sponsored by Intel from 1997 to 2019. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals became the title sponsor for ISEF in 2020, but the event was cancelled that year and replaced with an online version due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 ISEF was a fully virtual event while 2022 was held online and in-person in Atlanta, GA, and 2023 was in person in Dallas, TX. The 2024 ISEF will be held in person in Los Angeles, CA.
The N71 road is a national secondary road traversing counties Cork and Kerry in Ireland. Towns and villages along the route, westward from Cork city, include Innishannon, Bandon, Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Bantry and Glengarriff in County Cork. Continuing westwards from Glengarriff into County Kerry, the route passes Kenmare and terminates at Killarney.
Society for Science, formerly known as Science Service and later Society for Science and the Public, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of science, through its science education programs and publications, including the bi-weekly Science News magazine and Science News Explores.
Marine plastic pollution is a type of marine pollution by plastics, ranging in size from large original material such as bottles and bags, down to microplastics formed from the fragmentation of plastic material. Marine debris is mainly discarded human rubbish which floats on, or is suspended in the ocean. Eighty percent of marine debris is plastic. Microplastics and nanoplastics result from the breakdown or photodegradation of plastic waste in surface waters, rivers or oceans. Recently, scientists have uncovered nanoplastics in heavy snow, more specifically about 3,000 tons that cover Switzerland yearly.
The Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, also referred to as the United Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, is a diocese in the Church of Ireland. The diocese is in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin. It is the see of the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, the result of a combination of the bishoprics of Cork and Cloyne and Ross in 1583, the separation of Cork and Ross and Cloyne in 1660, and the re-combination of Cork and Ross and Cloyne in 1835.
Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptability, plus a wide range of other properties, such as being lightweight, durable, flexible, and inexpensive to produce, has led to its widespread use. Plastics typically are made through human industrial systems. Most modern plastics are derived from fossil fuel-based chemicals like natural gas or petroleum; however, recent industrial methods use variants made from renewable materials, such as corn or cotton derivatives.
Microplastics are fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm (0.20 in) in length, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Chemicals Agency. They cause pollution by entering natural ecosystems from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, food packaging, and industrial processes.
Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension. They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. They are used in exfoliating personal care products, toothpastes, and in biomedical and health-science research.
The Google Science Fair was a worldwide online science competition sponsored by Google, Lego, Virgin Galactic, National Geographic and Scientific American. It was an annual event spanning the years 2011 through 2018.
Jack Thomas Andraka is an American who, as a high school student, won the Gordon E. Moore Award at the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a method to possibly detect the early stages of pancreatic and other cancers. In 2018, as a junior majoring in anthropology and in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he was awarded the Truman Scholarship for his graduate studies.
Ciara Judge is an Irish scientist from Kinsale, County Cork and a public speaker. She was a finalist of the 42nd BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2013 at the age of fifteen with two others: Emer Hickey, Sophie Healy-Thow. She also won a First place Award in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists 2013. In 2014, she jointly with her 2 friends won the grand prize in Google Science Fair Ciara was also listed as one of the 25 most influential teens in Time for the year 2014 as a result of her innovation.
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Abigail P. W. Barrows is an American marine research scientist and advocate based in Maine. Barrows directs microplastics research that is used to inform conservation-focused legislation, and she initiated the first baseline data map of microplastic pollution distribution in the waters off the coast of Maine.
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I was born in Germany and my parents moved to the Ballydehob area of west Cork in 1980, when I was nine, ...met my partner, Rui Ferreira, in England and we both moved back to west Cork. We were boat builders ... my son Fionn
We met at the International Boatbuilding Training College in England in 1994, where we obtained our City and guilds in wooden boatbuilding.