Umut Tugay Temel, a first year Media and Communications student, took first place in Careers and Employability’s Innovation Challenge this month for his idea to create an interdisciplinary, inclusive, and innovative online community for people across the University to connect and engage.
Umut won a £500 tech voucher for his winning pitch.
Professor Katie Atkinson, Interim Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science, said that: “Collaboration across traditional discipline boundaries is essential for driving forward innovations in many domains. Umut’s proposal is highly supportive of this aim and was driven by a gap he saw for technology to facilitate collaboration across different groups within the University.
“I applaud his ideas to match together diverse skill sets to form groups to collectively tackle interdisciplinary problems.”
Well done to all applicants, the finalists, and Umut for their thought-provoking initiatives to enhance the student experience.
The final pitch (L-R) Zoe Mitton, Ellie Monether-Davies, Umut Tugay Temel, Prof Katie Atkinson , Natasha Hambleton-Grey, Hyeojin Kim, Tamir Halevi, Luca Arcerio, and Emma Clarke
The Innovation Challenge
As part of the Innovation Challenge, applicants were asked to suggest how technology could enhance student experiences at the University. Student’s ideas had to address at least one of the four Grand Challenges defined by the UK’s industrial strategy.
The strategy identifies key global trends that will transform our future, which are:
- clean growth
- ageing society
- future of mobility
- Artificial Intelligence and data
Careers and Employability wanted applicants to understand that being entrepreneurial is not just about starting your own business, but can be about having a set of skills which allow you to innovate, spot opportunities, and solve problems.
During the challenge, Titan the robot became a Career Coach for the day. Titan was found singing and dancing around University Square promoting the challenge, as well as giving an insight into what the future could look like with robots walking around campus.
The Shortlist
The successful three groups were:
- Tamir Halevi and Luca Arcerio
- Hyeojin Kim and Natasha Hambleton-Grey
- Umut Tugay Temel
Their applications tackled key challenges of University life including loneliness, making connections, and improving sleep.
Each of the finalists delivered exceptional pitches, impressing staff members and external employers.
Zoe Mitton, the Regional University Partnerships Manager at FDM Group said: “The most impressive feature of all the ideas from the finalists was that they had been inspired by their own experiences as students to support future students to continue having positive experiences.”
If you are interested in getting involved in future enterprise projects, you can keep up to date by following @livunicareers on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.