CIT Innovation Week 2016 Winners Announced

Cork Institute of Technology’s Innovation Week 2016 came to a close with the awarding of the Local Enterprise Offices (Cork) CIT Prize for Innovation. The winner of this year’s first prize of €4,000, and title of CIT Entrepreneur of the Year, went to Vincent Forde, a third year mechanical engineering student from Carrigaline, Co Cork for his project GASGON, which is a degassing solution for flowing fluids.

GASGON was chosen from 52 entries for the Local Enterprise Offices (Cork) sponsored prize, which awards €10,000 in cash prizes to those whose inventions, and business ideas, are judged most creative, novel, innovative, and likely to succeed in the workplace. Vincent completed the Student Inc., programme in CIT’s Rubicon Centre last Summer and was most recently the winner of the Accenture “Leaders of Tomorrow” 2016 Competition Final.

The Most Innovative Award of €2,000 went to a group of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering students for their project H-Flo 1, a safety device, which enables a worker to detach from a crate or platform if the H-Flo device becomes submerged in water.  The team’s idea came from a tragic accident in Limerick where two bridge workers died when the platform they were using fell into the river and they were unable to detach from it.

Award for Best Business Plan, and €1,500, was Safe Release Hook, a construction sector safety hook mechanism, while Best Presentation Pitch Award of €1,500 went to KazooCare, a forum to stimulate discussion on Early Childhood Education and Care services. The winner of the Best Exhibition Stand, and €1,000, was Shelve Tech, a product designed to safely stack, and unstack, items from above head height.

A new award this year was the Enactus CIT Social Innovation Award, sponsored by EMC. This award honours individuals and teams who excel in the area of social entrepreneurship and innovation. The overall winners, with a prize of €1,000 and the title of Enactus CIT Social Innovation Award Winner 2016, are Alex Sheehan, Eoin McCarthy and Myat Min, for their hand-held water purification device combating the lack of clean drinking water locally and in third world countries.

There were two highly commended projects also awarded under this category. These were the best individual idea which went to Aaron Dennehy for his wheelchair accessibility App and best team idea went to Leah Corbett, Alison Fogarty, Rachel Manzke, and Ronan Bradbury, for their idea to create a non-profit, impermanent urban community arts centre, both receiving €250.

“CIT’s Innovation Week provides students with an opportunity to showcase their ideas through various competitions and events, and also to attend a number of seminars where successful entrepreneurs can inspire and engage them.  This is the start of many students’ entrepreneurial journey and a route to starting their own business,” says Gerard O’Donovan, Head of Faculty of Business and Humanities at CIT.

CIT Innovation Week, now in its 6^th year, was a week-long series of events and activities promoting entrepreneurship and innovation across CIT’s five campus locations.  Over 2,500 people attended this year’s event, making it the most successful Innovation Week to date.

For further details of CIT Innovation Week 2016 please see www.cit.ie/innovationweek