Fionn is changing the world
Inventor, tv host, student
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
Christien is sinds 2016 achtergrondcoördinator bij UKrant. Ze plant de achtergrondverhalen en begeleidt de auteurs. Bij haar eigen verhalen ligt de focus op wetenschap en academisch leven. Daarnaast schrijft ze veel over onderwerpen als sociale veiligheid en maakt ze graag persoonlijke interviews. In haar vrije tijd schrijft ze jeugdboeken en geeft schrijftrainingen.Fionn Ferreira is twenty-three years old. In a week or two, he’ll be getting his master’s degree in chemistry, after a little more than five years at the UG. All par for the course so far.
But then there are his ‘extracurriculars’. He presented at one of the largest podiums at the World Economic Forum. He spoke at the Earth Optimism Summit organised by the Smithsonian, as well as the ChangeNow conference in Paris. He held a speech at the British House of Lords.
He was awarded the Young Inventor’s Prize by the European Patent Office, was named Young Explorer by National Geographic and Plastic Action Champion by the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership. He was included in the Forbes 30 under 30, a list of young leaders and entrepreneurs.
He starred in an advertising campaign for HP and modelled in Emporio Armani’s Sustainable Campaign in 2022. Anyone travelling through Schiphol Airport that year would have seen his photo.
Television shows
We haven’t even mentioned the business he started after he won the Google Science Award for his incredibly simple method of removing microplastics from water. Or the television shows he’s producing, such as the animated series Planet Nioff, about an alien who, just like him, loves inventing things and travels to other planets with all the things he’s found. ‘I have a planet named after me’, he explains. It was his prize for coming in second place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2018. ‘That’s how I came up with the idea. Nioff is an explorer, just like I am.’
Most people spend half their productive time asleep
November 14 will see the start of the game show What’s Next on Irish television, which Fionn will be presenting. On this show, kids between the ages of nine and fourteen will be doing challenges in which they have to come up with solutions to various environmental problems. The winner will be allowed to pitch their idea to a real investor.
In other words: Fionn is a lot more than just a student.
‘I had like 142 flights this year’, showing his phone that logs all his travels. ‘12,000 kilometres of travel. I will work on a weekend in Seattle, hosting a stage or doing a TV show, and come back in time on Monday morning for my 9 a.m. lecture here.’
More than once, he was only one of three students who actually bothered to show up. ‘And I’m like: I travelled so much to be here for this. Where is everybody else?’
Invention
It all started five years ago with that Google Science Award. Fionn, who hails from Ballydehob in the south of Ireland, spent most of his childhood outside, since there wasn’t much to do in the tiny village. He went kayaking and would spend days camping on some of the small islands near the coast. One day, he noticed that there was both plastic and oil sticking to the rocks on the beach.
He decided to look into it further – he loved tinkering, taking things apart to see how they worked – and found out that plastic and oil attract each other. If you enrich the oil with the iron ore magnetite and mix it with the water, you can use a magnet to remove both the oil and plastic from the water.
It was a revolutionary discovery. While Fionn moved to Groningen to start his studies here, the investors came knocking. Even Robert Downey Jr. gave him a considerable amount of money to invest in his technology. But the young, cheerful, smart, and extroverted junior scientist also turned out to be a gifted and inspiring orator.
His career was off to a great start.
Early riser
‘It felt sometimes like I was leading a double life’, he says. ‘My friends would ask: what are you doing on the weekend? And I’m like: hosting my TV show in Belfast, but I’ll be back Monday. How about you?’
I cannot bear to see the wilderness destroyed
He liked that people here didn’t seem that bothered by all the fuss. ‘Nobody cares. I didn’t get any exceptions, and I still had to pass all my exams.’ He didn’t even need the student entrepreneur scheme, an arrangement similar to the scheme for top athletes. He never missed a single exam, never failed a single class. He graduated with honours from his bachelor programme and he will soon be finishing up his master.
How does he do it?
‘My philosophy is that most people spend half of their productive time asleep’, he says.
‘So for me, I’m not productive after lunch. I wake up early, like 6 a.m. I work from 6 until 12. The rest of the day is free.’
While he still goes to the lab some afternoons, he doesn’t work too hard. He might plan some meetings, do a bit of brainstorming. ‘But that core period from six until twelve in the morning is sacred time for me. That’s when I can focus and work really effectively.’
Same goal
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he loves what he does. ‘I love exploring, I love travelling, I love inspiring people and I love hosting. And I also absolutely love being in the lab.’
These things overlap more than you might think. ‘In a chemistry lab, you have to manage every little thing you’re doing. You have to be on top of everything. It’s the same with hosting or producing.’
In every endeavour, his goal is the same: finding ways to improve the world in green, sustainable ways. It hurts him to see the damage our waste does to his beloved Irish beaches, to see the effects of climate change at Svalbard and the Arctic Sea, where he did his research on microplastics. ‘Being in the wilderness is my favourite pastime and I just cannot bear to see it destroyed.’
But at the same time, he flies all over the world, leaving a considerable CO2 footprint. He nods in acknowledgement. ‘That does sound a bit hypocritical. I’m hired by events that want to look sustainable and sometimes I just fly in and out of Singapore. But the travel I do now feels utilitarian; each trip has a purpose, from meeting policymakers to addressing public awareness on environmental issues.’
Systemic issue
He tries to take the train whenever he can. However, he says, he cannot solve the problem on his own: it’s systemic. ‘Sometimes I feel the system and the industry force me to travel so much, which is very sad. Surely, it should be possible to make trains cheaper? Or make the sustainable choice more attractive.’
I want to show kids that their ideas can have an impact
He emphasises that it’s up to governments to make these choices, even though he knows they only ever look at the short term. He also knows that most people haven’t a single clue why it’s so important that we should try to save the environment. ‘I remember talking to Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in 2021, which included him discussing his golf course in Ireland in great detail with me. And I realised: some people just don’t get it. But we cannot be worried about other people.’
So, he does what he can: inspire, inform, and influence people. ‘We tell the story to others, and people who listen have two options. One is to go along with it, and they become your friend. The other option is they don’t. And that is their choice.’
He isn’t one to give up, though. ‘If I stay at home, being depressed, thinking I’m never going to solve this problem, I’m not going to change anything. And I just don’t like to be sad. For me, having an approach where I enjoy the process, not the outcome, is super important.’
Message
And so he enjoys what he has. He loves the science he does. ‘I get to play with Lego all day and if that means it’s good for the environment, that’s the bonus.’
He loves working on his ideas: his microplastics remover has finally been patented. Water companies in Austin, Texas and New York are using his invention. ‘At the moment our major restriction is that governments don’t want to test for microplastics, because they’re afraid to see what they’ll find’, he says.
He loves coming up with ideas to get his message across. If he can convey just a fraction of his enthusiasm, he’s happy. ‘I value creativity and a childlike curiosity when approaching environmental problems’, he says.
That’s also what What’s Next is about. ‘I want to show the kids that their ideas – any idea – no matter how crazy, can have an impact. Just like mine did, when I was that age.’
What’s Next airs on RTE 2 on November 14 at 5.30 p.m. local time. Outside Ireland, the programme can be watched on RTE Player.
