Mayo's Caoilfhinn wins prestigious Global Undergraduate Award

THE Global Undergraduate Awards (GUA), the world’s leading academic awards programme for undergraduate research, has announced the winners and highly commended entrants of its 2025 programme.

Caoilfhinn Plunkett from Mayo was announced as a winner of the highly commended award at the All-Ireland summit event in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

Caoilfhinn, a Trinity College Dublin student, was awarded for her project ‘Analysing Whether Student Experiences of Using TooGoodToGo Support a Sustainable Food Transition in Dublin’ in the Earth and Environmental category.

The Global Undergraduate Awards programme consists of global winners, regional winners, and highly commended entrants. Following an extensive judging process by 500 academics worldwide, the winners were selected from over 2,400 submissions spanning 348 universities in 99 countries across 25 categories.

Four other Irish students were recognised as highly commended this year, along with 11 regional winners. Global winners included two students from Trinity College.

Jim Barry, chairman of The Global Undergraduate Awards, said: “We are delighted to celebrate these exceptional students and their achievements at the All-Ireland Awards event. These awards celebrate the very best of undergraduate research from every corner of the world.

“Each winning submission represents not only extraordinary academic achievement, but also the creativity, ambition, and intellectual curiosity of this generation of students. We are particularly proud to see Irish students once again recognised on the global stage, reflecting the strength of Ireland’s higher education sector.”