News

IT Carlow TATA ‘Dragon’s Den’ Competition Winners 2011

04/05/2011

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), leading global IT consultancy, teamed up again this year with Carlow County Enterprise Board(CEB) and the Computing and Networking Department of Institute of Technology 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 IT service or product, which addresses an ethical concern in today's society.

Michael P Kelly (Carlow County Enterprise Board) and Ciara Keville (HRM - TCS) formed the judging panel at Institute of Technology Carlow on Friday 20th May.

Four groups with the best project submissions underwent a gruelling Q&A session. The project judged most commercially sound, innovative and ethical, entitled ‘Central Health’ aimed to centralise medical records in order to increase efficiency and reduce redundancy of data storage.  The project was undertaken by Ciara Guinan, Kexiang Wang and Zhaodong Lu. The lucky winners received a cash prize of €3,000, which aims to assist them in bringing their idea to market. During their presentations the shortlisted teams 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 TATA and our local County Enterprise board who have been very supportive of our endeavours and I. I see this ongoing collaboration as  testament to the quality of our degree and its graduates.  I wish to thank my colleagues in the CAN department Ms. Caroline Byrne and Dr Greg Doyle 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 2010/2011 academic year and look forward to forging stronger ties with Institute of Technology Carlow in the future.

Photo:  Ciara Keville (Human Resources Manager, TCS), Kexiang Wang, Ciara Guinan, Zhaodong Lu, Michael P. Kelly (CEO, Carlow County Enterprise Board)