News

Winning ideas from the IT Carlow TATA ‘Dragon’s Den’ Competition

12/06/2012

Leading global Information Technology consultancy, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), teamed up again this year with Carlow County Enterprise Board (Carlow CEB) and the Computing and Networking Department of Institute of Technology Carlow (IT Carlow) with its TCS Challenge, a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style competition where students’ final year projects compete for a €3,000 cash prize (jointly funded by TCS and Carlow CEB).  The aim is to produce a business plan for a commercially sound, innovative Information Technology service or product, which addresses an ethical concern in today's society.

Kieran Comerford (Carlow CEB), and Cristine Carty (HRM - TCS) formed the judging panel at the Institute of Technology Carlow.

Four groups with the best project submissions underwent a gruelling Q&A session. The project judged most commercially sound, innovative and ethical was one aimed at implementing notification technologies in the waste collection business in order to reduce carbon emissions.  The winning project was undertaken by PJ Weldon. PJ received a cash prize of €3,000 to assist him in bringing the idea to market. During their presentations the shortlisted entrants were given invaluable feedback from the judging panel.

Dr Enda Dunican, IT Carlow said “As programme director of the BSc (Hons) in Computing and IT Management programme, I am delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with an international company of the calibre of TCS and our local County Enterprise board, who have been very supportive of our endeavours.  I see this ongoing collaboration as a testament to the quality of our degree and its graduates. In addition, it enables our students to appreciate the real-world issues associated with their projects. I wish to thank my colleagues in the Computing and Networking Department, Ms. Caroline Byrne, Dr Greg Doyle and Mr Gerry Moloney for all of their hard work in supervising these projects and getting them to this stage. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with TCS and the CEB in the years to come.”

TCS was delighted to set this challenge for the students of the Computing and Networking Degree program this 2011/2012 academic year and look forward to forging stronger ties with Institute of Technology Carlow in the future.