Loreto STEM team awarded at Kinia Tech Week
A teacher at Loreto College Mullingar, Sinéad Uí Dhroma, was honoured with the Educator of the Year at Kinia’s Creative Tech Fest during Creative Technology Week 2026.
The school also received the AI and Machine Award and was nominated for the Organisation of the Year Award.
The events took place as part of Kinia’s annual showcase of young digital innovators, celebrating projects in creative technology, smart energy, green tech, mobile filmmaking, podcasting and robotics.
Sinéad said: “We are delighted that all our hard work has been acknowledged. The girls have worked so hard over a number of years to promote STEM in the school and we are delighted to be here.
“Thank you so much to Kinia for all their help and support because without them we wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
The awards were presented before a record-breaking attendance of 1,000 young innovators from across the country in the Explorium, Sandyford.
Kinia is an education focused non-profit and social enterprise reducing educational inequality by building digital skills and access to technology career pathways for young people.
Some 428,000 young people have benefited from Kinia’s work to date and 25,606 educators are engaged and 3,079 schools and youth centres supported nationwide.
The awards were presented during Creative Technology Week, when the 1,000 young innovators displayed their projects over two days at the Explorium.
Young people attended, engaged in hands-on workshops such as machine learning and AI, and competitions, such as the new Kinia Hydrogen Grand Prix (H2GP) – racing hydrogen-powered vehicles.
In the last year 2,000 educators were engaged and through the range of programmes, and 21,821 young people gained access to learning opportunities. Some 63% of those are students from socio-economically disadvantaged communities and 90.3% of STEM engagement involved girls and young women. Total reach extended to 414 schools and youth services.
CEO of Kinia, Marriane Checkley said: “Huge congratulations to Sinéad and the Loreto College students for their awards. We in Kinia are in awe of Sinéad’s motivation, her advocacy for her students and her promotion of technology. She is a worthy winner of the Educator of the Year Award.
"She is a passionate advocate of ‘Girls in STEM’ in Loreto College and she set up a school digital ambassador team for students, a robotics module for the TY programme, the all-inclusive Tech Thursday Lunchtime club and much more, and is an absolute credit to her school and students.
“Creative Technology Week is a highlight of the year, both for Kinia and the community of educators and young people attending. We remain dedicated to reducing educational inequality by building digital skills and access to technology career pathways for young people across Ireland.
“We are continuing to work towards our ambitious plan of upskilling 50,000 educators and reaching 800,000 young people by 2030 and these events are a huge part of helping us deliver our message.”