Enterprising students get €10K at innovation awards

9 Mar 2012

Courtyard at Cork Institute of Technology

Inventive third-level students are today being awarded for their commercially applicable innovations, with €10,000 being given out to the winning teams at the finals of the Innovation Awards at Cork institute of Technology.

Internet entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist Bill Liao, who is also the co-founder of CoderDojo here in Ireland, gave the keynote address today at the awards and presented the winning teams with their prizes.

Here’s a snapshot of the CIT innovations that won prizes today:

The first prize of €4,000, and the title of ‘CIT Entrepreneur of the Year’ went to Cool Counter, a cooling device for beverages that can be integrated into a bar top to keep drinks cool. The team comprised biomedical and manufacturing engineering, mechanical engineering and business studies students Ann-Marie Cullinane, Daniel Goulding, Shane Fogarty, Cian O’Leary, Mohamed Slimane, Darren Dawson and Cian Hurley.

Muscle stress analysis

The ‘Most Innovative Award’ of €2,000 went to the Muscle Stress Indicator. The innovation, created by students from biomedical, mechanical engineering and management and marketing studies, is aiming to provide a real-time analysis that correlates the relationship between a muscle that is under stress and the resulting heat that is generated because of this.

The ‘Best Business Plan and Presentation Pitch’ and a prize of €1,000 was awarded to Pyra Aid, a wheelchair attachment that negotiates kerbs and footpaths.

Recipe Right mobile app

A New Media award was given to Orla Finn of Recipe Right. Finn, a multimedia student from Bandon in Co Cork, came up with the Recipe Right mobile app as a way of giving people access to inexpensive and healthy recipes that use less than seven ingredients.

A New Market entry award and prize of €1,000 was given to Grip to Stick, which is a new Hurley grip. Its team includes students from biomedical and mechanical engineering and business studies at CIT.

Fog Off – most innovative entry

A special commendation award for the most innovative entry was given to Fog Off, designed to solve the problem of glasses fogging up. The mechanical engineering students behind Fog Off received a cash prize of €500.

The awards themselves are sponsored by the Cork County and City Enterprise Boards.

Veronica Perdisatt of Cube Consulting, and chair of the adjudication panel, said the quality of the presentations and the professional approach of all of the teams was very impressive.

“The preparation that went into the business plans and the presentations was obvious and it was also clear that there was co-operation among departments here in CIT,” she said.

The 2011 winning entrant, Myles Murray of PMD Solutions, was accepted on a Genesis Enterprise Programme in the Rubicon Centre at CIT. Since graduating from the programme, Murray has developed an investment-level business plan and secured funding for his product development.

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

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