The Green Design Challenge 2004

Five promising Ulster students are part of three all-Ireland teams in the UK and Ireland final of a design scheme aimed at attracting more girls into engineering.

The Green Design Challenge 2004 hopes to attract girls aged 16 and 17 into engineering through the design and building of working wind turbines.

On Wednesday the teams from across Ireland will battle it out in London against the regional winners from Northern, Southern England & Wales, and Scotland at Imperial College.

The Ulster girls making the trip are Deirdre Murray from Dominican College, Belfast; Alison Edgar from Friends School, Lisburn; Catherine McGinnity from Mount Lourdes Grammar School, Enniskillen; Jill McMahon and Janine McKnight from Victoria College, Belfast; and Aileen Ryan from Our Lady and St Patrick's College, Belfast.

The budding young female engineers had to win through the Belfast heat of 60 entrants, split up into teams of four on the day, to win places in the final.

The grand prize is a week-long Earthwatch expedition to the Arctic Circle or Czech Republic involving research into climate change and the environmental issues.

The challenge was developed by the Imperial College London in partnership with Shell UK and Irish Shell in response to the low numbers of young women joining engineering undergraduate studies in the UK and