Maynooth's first secondary school student enterprise camp looks at the Future of Food

Congratulations to the the winning team with their idea 'CURA'
Monday, August 28, 2017 - 11:30

 "It's so refreshing to see such powerful, imaginative ideas' said Bord Bia Insights specialist, David Cullen as he sat on the judging panel on Friday 18th of August here in Maynooth University.  80 secondary school students, from 3rd to 5th year,  had signed up to join our week-long Enterprise Summer camp.  Students were put into teams of 5 or 6 and put to work on a project asking them to imagine the Future of Food. Some took the angle of food as sports nutrition: some looked at feeding your brain - food for studying; others developed ideas around school-lunches or food for travel.  The course was designed and led by Maynooth's department of Design Innovation with tremendous support from the School of Business and the Department of Electronic Engineering.
 
The programme was based around the rules and tools of design thinking.  The engineering element exposed the students to the exciting world of programming, robotics and app development.  On the business side, they learned all about managing for innovation and how to come up with business models.  They also heard the real stories from a couple of start-up entrepreneurs about the highs and lows of running your own business.
 
Speaking at the final presentations, Dr Peter Robbins, head of the department, commented: ' there are few things more exhilarating than seeing smart people developing sparkling ideas and going through the full innovation process over a single week.  These students have a wonderful future ahead, they are creative, hard-working, imaginative and good communicators.  We enjoyed having them here for the week and the feedback suggests they loved it too.'
  

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