Students Gallop to Success at BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp
Winners of the 2016 BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp announced at NovaUCD
Dublin, Thursday 3rd March 2016: A talented team of five teenagers from Offaly, Dublin, Kilkenny and Limerick today claimed the winning spot at the 2016 BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp with their project entitled ‘Courses for horses; feeding performance horses as nature intended’. The group presented to a judging panel of accomplished business professionals as they looked to demonstrate how their idea could improve the digestive health and efficiency of performance horses.
Daniel Carroll aged 16 from Colaiste Choilm in Offay, Khadija Gull aged 17 from Loreto Secondary School Balbriggan in Dublin, Maeve Shaw aged 16 from Coláiste Pobal Osraí in Kilkenny, David Hamilton aged 15 from Ardscoil Ris in Limerick and Alanna Slater aged 16 from Desmond College in Limerick won ‘best overall team’ at the 7th annual BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp. The team impressed the judges with their well-planned and thought out business pitch for ‘Courses for horses’ which they presented this afternoon at NovaUCD.
The team was selected for its significant progress over the four-day workshop, which is designed to equip students with practical skills and knowledge to transform a creative idea into a viable business proposition. The students, selected because they displayed particular business ambition, are shown how to set up a company, write a business plan, create a marketing campaign, draft a budget and present their ideas competently to senior academics and business people.
Heather Murphy aged 16 from Sutton Park School in Dublin was recognised as the best individual student. She showed the judges an in-depth understanding of the process of bringing an idea she had on paper all the way through to project commercialisation.
Congratulating all the participants at the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp award ceremony this afternoon, Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland, said; “This week we saw some of the country’s brightest young minds come together at the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp. The programme aims to help students’ bridge the gap between education and business and bring their inventions to market and we have certainly seen this come to life over the past few days. I would like to congratulate everyone who took part and hopefully they leave here today with a greater understanding of how their creative ideas can live in the business world.”
Throughout the week each group was mentored by a senior BT professional and got inspiration from key speakers which included former BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition winner Aisling Judge and Rhona Togher, CEO of Restored Hearing.
ENDS
For media enquiries, please contact:
Lydia Tierney, FleishmanHillard, 01 6188459 or 085 7138810
Gina Kelly, PR, sponsorship & events manager, BT Ireland, 01 4325110 or 086 7805451
Notes to Editor:
The judging panel for the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was comprised of accomplished business professionals who invest their time freely to impart their commercial knowledge and experience on the students. This year’s members are:
- Dr Tony Scott, UCD and co-founder of BTYSTE
- Gearoid Mooney – director, ICT commercialisation, Enterprise Ireland
- Emma McNamara, reporter, RTÉ
- Shay Walsh, managing director, Business, BT Ireland
About BT
BT’s purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. It is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed-mobile products and services. Following the acquisition of EE on 29 January 2016, BT consists principally of six customer-facing lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Business, BT Consumer, EE, BT Wholesale and Openreach.
For the year ended 31 March 2015, BT Group’s reported revenue was £17,979m with reported profit before taxation of £2,645m.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.
For more information, visit www.btplc.com.
About NovaUCD
At NovaUCD, the hub for new ventures and entrepreneurs at University College Dublin, we nurture and support new high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies as part of UCD’s mission. At NovaUCD we provide purpose-built, state-of-the-art incubation facilities alongside a comprehensive business support programme for client companies. UCD’s technology transfer team, which is responsible for the commercialisation of intellectual property arising from research and other knowledge-intensive activity at UCD, is also based at NovaUCD. NovaUCD has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx. www.ucd.ie/nova
