Reforma announced as the winner of the Inaugural Stripe Business Bootcamp

Eve Kennedy, Brian McCabe, Paddy Corcoran, Deepta Suresh, Rachel Coghlan were announced as Best Group at the inaugural Stripe Business Bootcamp, for their project Reforma: The Reusable Crumple Zone. The project uses shape memory alloys to create vehicle crumple zones that improve passenger safety by absorbing impact energy and returning to their original shape. This reduces vehicle damage, repair costs, and automotive waste.

The Stripe Business Bootcamp, delivered in partnership with NovaUCD, enables students to further develop their entrepreneurial skills through an expanded series of workshops covering presentation techniques, business pitching, and startup fundamentals, guided by experts from leading science and technology fields as well as homegrown successful Irish businesses.

Reforma wins Stripe Business Bootcamp

The participating students and their exceptional projects were evaluated across multiple rounds of judging by a panel of industry leading experts, including Dr Tony Scott, Co-founder of the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (YSTE); Lucy Molan, Head of EMEA startups at Stripe; Amy Neale, Partner at Delta Partners; and Niamh Donnelly, Co-founder of Akara.

Speaking on the week and judging process, Professor Pat Guiry, Chairperson of the YSTE Board, said: “The standard of projects at this year’s inaugural Stripe Business Bootcamp has been exceptionally high. These students did not just demonstrate the strength of their ideas, they showed their ability to communicate, work as part of a team, adapt and think like entrepreneurs. The judging panel had a very tough task in selecting a winner, and all students should be incredibly proud of what they have achieved over the week.”

Alison Ahern, Head of the Stripe YSTE and Education Partnerships said: “It’s been incredibly rewarding to see the first Stripe Business Bootcamp come to life and to witness the growth in confidence, creativity and entrepreneurial thinking among these students. This initiative is about giving young people the opportunity to take their ideas further and understand what it takes to turn them into real-world ventures. At Stripe, we are committed to supporting young innovators on that journey, and the standard of work this week has been truly inspiring.”

Liam Cronin, Director of Innovation, UCD, said, “NovaUCD was delighted to partner with Stripe in delivering the inaugural Stripe Business Bootcamp and to enable the participating students engage with members of the UCD research community relevant to their projects. Over the last week the Bootcamp supported the talented students in developing their entrepreneurial and commercial thinking required to turn their innovative ideas into potential start-ups. I would like to congratulate the overall winning team, and all the students who participated in this year’s programme, and I hope to now see their ideas transformed into start-ups which go on to impact the economy and society in Ireland and further afield.”

Stripe’s ties to the startup community are at the core of the Business Bootcamp. The programme supports aspiring entrepreneurs on their journey to building and scaling new businesses. Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison started out as young Irish entrepreneurs, and Patrick won the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in 2005.

Beyond the bootcamp, Stripe’s support for the wider YSTE community continues on the global stage. Next week, the current Stripe Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year, alongside students from the other three top 2026 projects, will travel to San Francisco for Stripe Sessions. They will showcase their exhibitions projects to an audience of international technology leaders and meet with industry experts.

For more information on Stripe’s Business Bootcamp, and next year’s Stripe YSTE taking place from 6-9 January 2027, please visit https://stripeyste.com.

About the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

The Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition is designed to raise schools’ engagement in STEM subjects. The exhibition invites students aged 12-19 years from all over the island of Ireland to showcase innovative science and technology projects.

Founded by Dr Tony Scott and Rev Dr Tom Burke in 1965, the exhibition is a staple in the academic, scientific and technological calendar, and attracts on average over 40,000 visitors, making it one of the biggest events of its kind.

Stripe succeeded BT Ireland as the title sponsor of the exhibition in May 2025. The appointment came exactly two decades after Stripe cofounders Patrick and John Collison competed at the 2005 YSTE, where Patrick was crowned the overall winner, and John took home a category award.

Learn more at Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

About Stripe

Stripe is building programmable financial services for businesses. Millions of companies globally use Stripe to accept payments online and in person, embed financial services, power custom revenue models, and build a more profitable business.

Headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, Stripe processes over $1.9 trillion of payments annually, equivalent to 1.6% of global GDP. Stripe users include half of the Fortune 100, 80% of the Forbes Cloud 100  and every single company on the Forbes AI 50 that accepts online payments does so with Stripe.

Stripe users include half of the Fortune 100, 80% of the Forbes Cloud 100  and every single company on the Forbes AI 50 that accepts online payments does so with Stripe.

Through its scale and investments in R&D, particularly artificial intelligence and stablecoins, Stripe accelerates the utility of frontier technology across Ireland and the global economy.

About NovaUCD

During the last 20+ years NovaUCD, named by the FT as one of Europe’s leading start-up hubs for the last three-years in a row, has developed an excellent and expanded infrastructure and a suite of comprehensive business support programmes, dedicated accelerator programmes, and an ecosystem of mentors, investors and industry partners that help to nurture an enthusiastic and dynamic community of start-ups and established companies, to grow and scale on the global stage.

The Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was developed by BT Ireland in collaboration with NovaUCD. www.novaucd.ie

About The Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition Ltd (YSTE Ltd)

YSTE Ltd is a charity with a proud heritage of inspiring generations of young people to engage with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Through our flagship Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition and related programmes, we provide a platform for students to showcase their creativity, innovation, and problem?solving skills. Our mission is to nurture curiosity, empower youth, and celebrate the role of STEM in shaping a better future.

YSTE Ltd also engages internationally through partnerships with organisations in other countries, supporting the extension and sharing of the Irish Young Scientist model and enabling international collaboration in STEM education.

YSTE Ltd is a charitable company limited by guarantee and is governed in accordance with the Companies Act 2014 and the Charities Governance Code.

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