A young Lincolnshire physicist has seen off global competition to win a trip to meet some of the world's leading scientists.

ormer William Farr School pupil Courtney Williams, 19, from Welton, won the EIROforum prize while representing the UK at an international science contest in Paris.

Her reward is a visit to the famous CERN laboratory in Switzerland.

"I didn't expect to win. All the other projects were of such high quality – it was a bit of a shock," said Miss Williams.

"There were about 140 participants and about 90 projects. Some people had been working on them for more than a year.

"I had seven judging sessions in all but a lot of our time was spent elsewhere. We got to explore Paris and meet lots of other young scientists from around the world.

"It was one of the best experiences I've had and still would have been even if I hadn't won anything."

As reported in the Echo, Miss Williams, who is now studying physics at Imperial College London, won the right to represent her country at the Big Bang national science fair in April.

For both competitions she presented work carried out during a summer placement at the University of Sheffield, to detect neutrino particles using underwater microphones.

Dr Lee Thompson, in whose laboratory Courtney carried out her project, said he and his colleagues were delighted with her success.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to see the research that goes on at CERN, as well as meeting some of the world's top particle physics researchers – including Nobel Laureates."