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Thorough preparation earns praise for TU/e Contest participants
2017-06-02
From a compact system for safely hanging up your coat to the first steps towards a revolution in process technology. The plans and prototypes presented yesterday during the third edition of the TU/e Contest were highly diverse. President of the Executive Board Jan Mengelers, in his capacity as jury foreman, had words of praise for this year's participants. He was impressed by their thorough preparation.
Lex Lemmens, dean of the Bachelor College, yesterday officially handed over his brainchild, the TU/e Contest, to Isabelle Reymen, director of TU/e Innovation Space. Thus, the work presented later that evening may be seen as a taste of things to come in this creative hotspot over the coming twelve months.
In a pleasantly cool Blauwe Zaal twenty more or less complete plans were presented in elevator pitches to an expert jury of representatives of various companies. The audience too, which included many of the participants' friends and family members, had the chance to choose their favorite.
The contest was divided into three categories: ideation (conceiving a new idea), prototyping and student teams. The winner of the last category was team FAST, whose construction of a system intended to power a bus using formic acid before the end of the year is currently at an advanced stage. Team FAST, now comprising no fewer than forty-five students, received an award of four thousand euros.
In the ‘prototyping’ category, Jakx quickly emerged as the likely winner. This system's practicality had public appeal; it had already received the audience award of one thousand euros. For a small fee, cafe visitors can secure their coats in a device, thus avoiding the need to stand in line for the cloakroom. The expert jury awarded the sum of six thousand euros as well as a work place in the soon to be realized Innovation Space.
The award for the best idea, four thousand euros and a work place went to eMinds, an idea for software development that draws on the mind-mapping method to ensure that no knowledge is lost. It is applicable in both an educational environment, where its developers say it is currently being tested, and a commercial setting.