Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) saw its inaugural campus wide Solve-It Challenge come to a successful conclusion recently with the announcement of Jonathan O’Donnell as the Solve-It Grand Final Winner 2015.
Jonathan, who lives in Tramore and originally hails from Clonmel, is a second year student on the BSc in Applied Healthcare and impressed the panel of Judges with his clever health services product, his enthusiasm and his ability to creatively tackle problems in this area.
Jonathan was nominated as the overall winner from the five shortlisted finalists on the day. Second prize was awarded to John Liston and Michael Doyle, both life sciences students, for their innovative land management solution. John, from Clonmel, Co. Tipperary and Michael, from Roundwood in Co. Wicklow, made left a strong impression on the panel with the aid of their home made prototype clearly demonstrating how their solution would work.
Other finalists added an international flair to the competition. These entries showed great diversity with ideas ranging from online gaming products, to innovative flexible lending platforms to potentially ground breaking wireless charging technology. All of the teams were commended by the panel for their creativity and professionalism in coming up with and presenting their Solve-It ideas.
The Solve-it Challenge is an innovative competition that is designed to increase the profile and visibility of entrepreneurship across the entire SETU campus. Most importantly it aims to encourage students to think entrepreneurially by identifying problems and developing solutions, potentially commercial, to solve those problems.
The competition ran for the first time this year with the aid of sponsorship from AIB and support from EY and the response from students was overwhelming. Commenting on the competition its founder, Margaret Tynan, a lecturer in Enterprise in the School of Business, explained, “Interest in the competition was great from the start with entries received from right across the campus. The entries were so inspiring and it just goes to show the sheer wealth of innovative ideas that our students have”.
The highlight of the Solve-It Grand Final was an inspirational talk by Tom Brennan CTO & Founder of EirGen Pharma, who shared his experience of enterprise competitions and lessons learned with the finalists. Judging the competition were Adrienne Dolphin (Owner, Rigney Dolphin Group), Tomas Furlong (Branch Manager, AIB Lisduggan) and James O’Sullivan (Technology Transfer Manager, WIT). Jonathan was nominated as the overall winner from the five shortlisted finalists on the day.