Maura Moore-McCune is a Leaving Certificate student at The King’s Hospital School with a strong interest in biomedical engineering and assistive technology. She developed VIPMOD, a system for the vision-impaired that uses machine learning to detect fast-moving vehicles in real time.
Maura’s work has received significant national and international recognition. She is the winner of the SciFest 2024 National Final, earning the title SciFest STEM Champion 2024. She also won the Global Community Impact Prize at the MIT Global AI Hackathon Finals 2024 and received the 2025 RSA Gertie Shields Supreme Award.
Representing SciFest internationally, Maura achieved outstanding success at two major STEM competitions. She won a Gold Medal and was Category Winner at the Eskom International Science Fair 2024 in South Africa. She represented SciFest at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2025 in Columbus Ohio, placing 4th in Biomedical Engineering and winning a Mawhiba Special Award. Regeneron ISEF is the world’s largest and most prestigious pre-college STEM competition.
In developing VIPMOD, Maura has engaged with Vision Ireland, where members of the vision-impaired community have tested her prototypes. She is currently using this user feedback to refine VIPMOD and move towards the next stage of commercialisation.