In a very competitive student entrepreneurship challenge final in Maynooth University last Friday , Shane Mulligan emerged the winner and took home the 5000 Euro first prize. Shane's idea could literally save lives. From a farming background, Shane has spent a lot of time looking into workplace fatalities on farms. Specifically, he found that 30% of deaths on farms are due to the inhalation of the deadly gases that occur when farmers mix or agitate slurry. Even one breath taken when the levels of hydrogen sulphate are dangerously high can be fatal. He says "Growing up and living on a farm, I wanted to stop these needless fatalities occurring as it could very well happen to a member of my family or to myself for that matter.' His idea is a traffic light warning beacon which has a sensor (like a smoke detector but this time calibrated to detect the deadly hydrogen sulphate) and it has a large circular light at the top which changes colour as the level of the gas gets beyond the normal, tolerable range. Shane has worked with farmers and farming organisations to develop this idea. Patent Attorney, Nikki Dwyer, on the judging panel could clearly see the potential for this product: 'You've found a serious problem that affects millions of people around the world and you've managed to come up with a creative, workable and very clever solution - this is a wonderful idea' she said.
In second place, amateur photographer and design student, Victoria Anderson has developed a solution to a problem which has plagued the photography industry for decades; it's the fact that specks of dust can get onto the lens and this tends to happen more often with outdoor photography. Photographers covering sports; gardening; weddings; rock-concerts; news items are likely to change lenses very frequently to get just the right shot - and every time they do, there is a chance that another tiny dust particle will get onto the lens meaning that when the shot is produced, the photographer will spend hours and hours in Photoshop trying to airbrush off the little specks. Victoria is patenting a way of protecting the lens with a latex coating that locks when the lens cap is opened and closed so everything is protected. Victoria works in a camera shop and has already found great interest for her idea. MaynoothWorks' Eoin Laverty is helping Victoria with the IP. Photography enthusiast, David Ennis from Kildare Local Enterprise Board was also on the judging panel and he was most enthusiastic about this idea, commenting that he knows hundreds of photographers who would pay a great deal for this facility. Victoria walked away with a cheque for 3000 Euro and she intends to make a better prototype of her idea and file a patent for it with the money.
In third place was Conor Cogan with his range of speciality wooden household hipster goods, under his own cool brand-name; The Bearded Man - like bottle openers, pizza slicers and coasters. Conor is already trading with Kilkenny Design, Carrolls and many giftware stores and has order for thousands of units. He wanted to money to get into production and satisfy the demand that he has already created. Happily the Enterprise Board has agreed to give him a grant to get this up and running. But Conor's capacity for design, for entrepreneurship and salesmanship deeply impressed the judges and he scooped third prize and a cheque for Euro 2000 which will allow him buy much needed equipment.
The Maynooth University student entrepreneurship challenge is jointly sponsored by Kildare Local Enterprise Board, McCann Fitzgerald with additional support from Enterprise Ireland. Peter Robbins, Head of the Department of Design Innovation at Maynooth, thanked the sponsors for their generous support. In particular, he acknowledged the enormous enthusiasm and practical help given by new Local Enterprise Board, CEO, Jacqui McNabb who visited Maynooth many times over the course of the competition and spent hours with the students helping to get their ideas off the ground. He also paid tribute to the students whose ideas have lit up the competition this year. 'I want to thank all the students who entered. This competition starts back in October when we start putting up posters and emailing students to start thinking of novel, original ideas. We then run meetings and workshops to help the students bring their ideas forward and help them create prototypes and we show them how to convert raw, fragmentary ideas into testable, coherent and market-ready concepts. And, today we saw some really super ideas'. Peter also thanked this year's judges: Nikki Dwyer, Patent Attorney with NTMA, David Ennis from the Kildare Local Enterprise Board and Matthew McCann, Entrepreneur and Start-Up CEO from Access Earth.