The Irish Computer Society (ICS) has granted honorary membership to the Esat BT Young Scientist competition winner Adnan Osmani who will be representing Ireland later this month at the EU Young Scientist Competition in Prague later this month.
This is the first time that honorary membership of the ICS has been granted to someone so young. Osmani was chosen for his contribution to software engineering and technical capability in his development of the “mega browser XWEBS.”
While announcing Osmani’s membership, Edwina Fitzmaurice, chair of the ICS announced that student membership of the ICS will be free for all qualifying students who are in third-level education.
Established in 1967, the ICS is the national body for information and communications technology professionals in Ireland and has in excess of 1,000 members. It represents their views to government on topics ranging from budgets and taxation to data protection, education and training. The society is also a nominating body for the Industrial and Commercial Panel of Seanad Éireann.
In 1997, the ICS founded ECDL Ireland to promote a recognisable standard of computer literacy to people in Ireland. The European Computer Driving Licence has since been used as a template across Europe for the rollout of computer literacy programmes and to date some three million people throughout the world are now ECDL certified, with some 12 million tests having been conducted through a network of 15,000 test centres.
In Ireland, over 220,000 people have taken the ECDL test, representing 6pc of the overall population and 12pc of Ireland’s working population.
By John Kennedy
