Team CloverCycle took home first prize at NCI's Social Capital Ideathon 2025.
Each year, NCI's School of Computing hosts an Ideathon, giving sudents the opportunity to develop and pitch ideas to a panel of industry experts, who feed back to them and choose a winner based on the feasibility and originality of the idea. Ideathons can lead to invention disclosures, so are a very important aspect of the knowledge transfer function of the College.
This year saw an expansion of the event, marking the involvement of SINNCI (Sustainability in NCI): School of Computing, School of Business and NCI Students Union working in collaboration. The event was supported by both KTI (Knowledge Transfer Ireland) and the Student Entrepreneurship Awards.
Professor Gina Quin, President of NCI, welcomed participating students from across the schools of Computing and Business, expressing gratitude to the panel of judges who volunteered of their time to hear the pitches and feedback to the teams: Dr Andrew Marsh, Technology Business Development Executive at IBM Research; Catrina Sheridan, Founder, Board Director @nafasi.tech; Conor Staunton O'Shea, VP Treasury & Trade Services, Regulatory Reporting Operations, Citi; Kapil Kaushik, Senior Customer Success Account Manager, Microsoft; Dr Paul Maguire, Head of Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, TU Dublin.
Professor Quin also acknowledged the team behind the Ideathon, including Tre Robert, President of NCISU; Professor Danielle Mc Cartan-Quinn, Vice Dean of the School of Business; Dave Cormack, Assistant Professor in the School of Business; Bertie Kelly, who includes Technology Transfer Officer in his remit; Professor Paul Stynes, Dean of the School of Computing; Professor Cristina Muntean, Vice Dean of the School of Computing; Dr Shivani Jaswal and Anshu Shahdeo from the School of Computing, Teresa Murray and Brian Kehoe from the Marketing team, and particularly noted the cross-college-SU cooperation necessary to see this initiative succeed, under the guidance and coordination of NCI's Knowledge Transfer Champion, Dr Anu Sahni.
Back l-r: Catrina Sheridan, Dave Cormack, Dr Paul Maguire, Dr Andrew Marsh, Conor Staunton-O'Shea; Front l-r: Kapil Kaushik, Dr Anu Sahni, Professor Paul Stynes, Tre Robert.
42 talented students pitched innovative solutions addressing real-world challenges while aligning with one or more Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each team was supported by faculty, and had the chance to engage directly with the judges. Pastries and pizzas sustained them during their hard work and subsequent celebrations.
The winning teams were:
1st Prize €500 - CloverCycle (Conor Timmins, Oisín McGillicuddy, Gustavo Carneiro Da Costa, Vitor Hugo Araujo Colley): Capitalizing on the effort to bring the bottles down to the bottle banks. Providing a service to those who might not have the time to do so, due to the fast-paced environment we live in, thus allowing people to focus their attention on more immediate demands.
2nd Prize €300 – Unicorn (Biswadeep Sarkar, Pallavi Guduguntla, Qingyun Cai, Devanshu Singh, Ilse Alejandra Martinez Rivera): Predictive AI-powered marketplace that sources surplus at-risk food from restaurants and retailers, then delivers it to consumers before it expires.
3rd Prize €200 – Celtify (Lathifa Jaffer Diang'a, Ibrahim Malik, Emmanuella Anita Odiaka, Eric Cheah Wei Lun, Georgii Korenkov): An AI-powered Celtic language recognition and translation tool. VR simulation creates an immersive way to learn and preserve the language.
Team Unicorn were presented with second prize by Dave Cormack, Professor Paul Stynes, Dr Anu Sahni, and Tre Robert, and;
Team Celtify won third prize, from a very competitive field.
