Updated, 15.45

THE DUBLIN TEENAGER who won the top prize at this year’s BT Young Scientist competition has taken one of the top prizes at the EU Young Scientist competition in Helsinki.

Alexander Amini, whose tennis sensor system impressed judges at the Irish competition in January, was awarded first prize in the engineering category at the equivalent European competition earlier today.

Alexander, a student at Castleknock College, was only 15 when he won the overall prize in the RDS in January, for his project which tracked a tennis player’s orientation, speed and shot habits through sensors worn by the player.

The system has an average accuracy of 95 per cent, which Irish judges said was significantly higher than the accuracy rate for other similar techniques currently in use elsewhere.

Not only that, but Alexander’s findings were later proven to be relevant to a wider variety of motion assessment scenarios in physical therapy and emergency medicine as well as in sports.

Ireland’s entries regularly perform highly in the EU competition; over the past 23 years, Ireland has won the top prize 13 times.

Entries for the 2012 BT Young Scientist contest close on October 3.

Separately today, a student from Cork Institute of Technology has won a major European engineering prize.

Rian Edman won the title of 2011 European Mechanical Engineering Student for his project, “Thermodynamic Analysis, Testing and Evaluation of a Concept 6 Stroke Engine”, at an event in London earlier today.