This year's BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition has officially begun following an opening ceremony at the RDS in Dublin.

There are 550 projects on display, with 1,200 secondary students from across the island taking part.

The event was opened by BT Ireland Chief Executive, Colm O'Neill.

There were video messages of support from a number of politicians and celebrities, including the Taoiseach and Brian O'Driscoll.

Last year's winner, Paul Clarke, advised this year's competitors to relax and do their best.

Judging by the team of 82 judges began this afternoon and will continue until tomorrow evening.

Around 50,000 people are expected to attend the event over the next four days.

A range of other events will run in tandem, including the RDS Primary Science Fair, robotics demonstrations and live science shows.

Some facts about this year's exhibition:

- 2,077 projects were entered, involving 4,616 students from 367 schools

- 550 projects were selected, involving 1,185 students

- There are 103 entries in the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category

- There were 165 in the Biological and Ecological Sciences category; 95 in the Technology category; 184 in the Social and Behavioural Sciences category

- For the first year ever there are more qualified project entries from Cork (115) than from Dublin (104)

- The top three counties represented, aside from Dublin and Cork, are Limerick (48), Roscommon (25) and Wicklow (24)

- 76% are group projects and 24% individual projects

- Since 1965 over 750,000 people have visited the visited the exhibition

- 20 tons of aluminium, 6,000sq m of carpet, 12x40 foot trucks full of equipment, thousands of light bulbs, and 135 men and women to prepare the main hall and project stands for the exhibition

- Irish winners have taken top honours 16 times at the EU science contest