New prizes recognize students’ innovation and entrepreneurial skills

This year’s Group Design Project (GDP), an essential element of the final year of the ECS Master’s programmes, was completed last week when the students made their final project presentations to the sponsoring companies.

Clients for the prestigious project this year included industrial companies such as L-3, Imagination Technologies, Xyratex, Gloucester Research, Detica, and Snowflake Software, as well as public bodies such as Heathrow Airport, and academic institutions.

ECS is very pleased to announce that a new prize for the GDP has been instituted by one of this year’s sponsors – Captec Ltd, which was founded by ECS alumnus and Visiting Professor Max Toti. The Captec Prize for Entrepreneurial Industrial Innovation (Group Excellence), will be awarded for the first time at the ECS Graduation Reception this summer. It is open to all the groups that took part in this year’s GDP, and is intended to recognize entrepreneurial insight and technical innovation in project initiatives that also have an industrial application.

The prize of £1000 will be shared equally between the winning team members, and GDP teams have already been invited to submit their applications. Academic supervisors and sponsoring clients are also able to submit recommendations for the prize.

In addition to the group prize, Captec has also generously awarded a prize for Entrepreneurial Industrial Innovation, which will be awarded to an individual student and can be applied to any piece of project work in ECS, or any other initiative, academic or extra-curricular, which exemplifies entrepreneurial insight and technical innovation with an industrial application. The application forms for both awards, which should be submitted by 12 April, are available from Joyce Lewis (ECS Senior Fellow); tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

‘We are very pleased to have two new prizes to formally recognize the high standard of our students’ achievements,’ said Professor Neil White, Head of Electronics and Computer Science. ‘The innovation and creativity within ECS makes it a great place for enterprise to thrive, and our students are also very aware of the opportunities and new ideas that can be developed from their knowledge of new technologies and devices. As an ECS alumnus who started his own company which has been outstandingly successful, Max is a great role model for our students and this encouragement in the form of generous prizes is very much valued by ECS. We look forward to a high standard of applications.’