IT Sligo students are invited to join the world’s brightest undergraduates in submitting their course work to the Undergraduate Awards [UA], an Irish academic awards programme that has been cited as the Irish “Junior Nobel Prize”.
IT Sligo student, Marie McDonnell, was named as a highly commended entrant in the Social Studies category for the 2012 Undergraduate Awards. Click here to read more about Marie’s story.
2013 is poised to be the biggest year yet for the Undergraduate Awards, with best-in-class students from the likes of CalTech, Oxford, University of Hong Kong and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay already registered to submit their research papers to the 2013 programme.
Representing the A – Z of academic disciplines, from Agricultural Science to the Visual Arts, the Undergraduate Award winners are considered as being among the most innovative young minds of their generation.
“We’re looking for the next generation of creative thinkers and problem solvers” said Programme Director, Louise Hodgson. “The programme attracts students who, at a very early stage in their academic careers, are already researching solutions to the pressing problems we face as a global community and turning commonly-accepted theories on their heads.”
Open to final and penultimate year undergraduate students, previous winners have included Sami Khan [University of Toronto] who created a low-cost filtration system for a novel new toilet design for developing countries and Fred English [University College Cork] who is currently working on the cure for preeclampsia, a medical condition that takes the lives of over 100,000 pregnant women annually. With backing from government and corporate partners, including Google, KPMG and Digicel, the programme is expecting to receive over 4000 submissions this year alone.
In November of this year, the nominees for the 2013 Undergraduate Awards will be invited to Dublin to attend the UA Summit – a three-
day pop-up incubation centre comprised of networking events, fireside chats and hands-on workshops. Coined as “a Davos for students”, the unique student conference provides a collision point for the brightest undergraduate minds, leading researchers and entrepreneurs to collaborate, share ideas and build relationships. The winning students will be awarded by patron of the awards programme, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, at the Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, which will form part of the UA Summit.
Interested students can register or submit their coursework at www.undergraduateawards.com. Submissions close May 24th 2013.
Caption for top photo: 2012 UA Winners pose with the Undergraduate Award medal for the launch of the 2013 Undergraduate Awards. Caption for bottom photo: Marie McDonnell (Foxford, Co Mayo), graduate of Social Studies at IT Sligo who received a ‘Highly Commended Award’ at the Undergraduate Awards. Marie (centre) is pictured with her lecturers Jessica Mannion and Dr John Pender. Dr Pender is a member of the Undergraduate Awards Steering Committee.