Engineers Ireland announce Student Innovation Awards short list
Release date: Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Engineers Ireland have highlighted the critical role that engineers will play in ensuring Ireland’s future economic success. Speaking at the announcement of the short listed nominees for the ‘Engineers Ireland Student Innovation Awards 2010, sponsored by Siemens' John Power underlined the importance of Ireland becoming a genuine home-grown innovation economy for the global market if we are to return to a period of positive economic growth.
Highlighting the need to recognise and invest in the people that will be at the heart of that economy, John Power said: “There is now growing recognition that innovation is the engine that will power our economic recovery. But while the enormous contribution of foreign direct investment to Ireland must be acknowledged, it is supporting an innovative mindset across indigenous business, the multi nationals operating here and education that must be our highest national priority now. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of these awards as a means of encouraging creative thinking not just in companies but in the young as well.”
“I strongly believe the various categories promote and inspire the ingenuity that is fundamental to our future economic wellbeing with engineering quite clearly having a key role to play in this respect. I would like to congratulate all of the participants in this year’s awards and I wish them the best of luck at the finals on Monday 21st June. They are a credit to this country and I hope that many of these projects will eventually make the transition from research to reality.”
The idea behind the awards is to recognise and reward innovation that is taking place in Ireland. The awards this year focus on the long standing Innovative Student of the Year award level 7 and level 8 which is sponsored for the twelfth year running by Siemens. The judges include Michael O’Connor from Siemens, Joe Fitzpatrick from IBM and Dr Dermot O’Dwyer from Trinity College.
The entries this year were extremely diverse. In the level 7 category, Sean O'Herlihy from DIT has designed a joystick controlled training car for young disabled children. The purpose of this project is to develop an attractive training device that will assist a young disabled child to master the concept of manoeuvring a powered wheelchair. The base and controls of a powered wheelchair are seamlessly combined with the body of a toy car. In level 8, Laurence Barry from Cork IT has developed tool to carry out the heat extraction of a chimney flue. The main objective of this project is to design, build and test a heat recovery device for a domestic chimney. The project aims to capture the waste heat from the flue and be incorporated into the water feed tank of a domestic house.
According to Michael O’Connor, Marketing Manager, Siemens Limited, integral to Ireland fulfilling its potential as a knowledge economy fuelled by innovation will be the supply of qualified and skilled science and technology graduates. “A higher level of engagement of science and technology subjects at primary and secondary school level is now critical in helping to increase the level of graduates in the area. I am delighted to see that 12 years on, the standard of submissions for the Student Innovation Awards shows that there is no shortage of talent in this country. I wish everyone the best of luck at the upcoming finals.”
The awards will take place in Clyde Road on June 21st 2010. Finalists of the Student Innovation Awards will present to the judges from 11am – 4pm and the award ceremony for all categories will take place that evening.