A group of enterprising school students gathered this week for the 10th annual BT Business Bootcamp. Five students from Cork, Limerick, Kerry and Offaly were announced overall winners for their project titled “The Design of a Nano-Formulation to Increase the absorption of Cannabidiol in the Gastro-Intestinal Tract”.
The BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was established in 2010 by BT and is delivered in partnership with the innovation team of UCD Research and Innovation to give students the commercialisation skills they need to develop their BT Young Scientist & Technology project ideas. The culmination of the four-day programme saw the students pitching their companies to an expert panel of judges.
Danila Fedotov, Jack O’Connor, Jennifer McCarthy, Michael Kirby and Roisin O’Connor were crowned “Best Group” winners. Cork student Anna O’Connor was presented with the “Best Individual” award.
The winning project was developed by Jennifer McCarthy, who had presented the idea at the 2019 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) earlier this year.
Congratulating all participants, Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland said, “The BT Business Bootcamp has been an integral part of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition programme for ten years, and in that time I am proud to say that many of our alumni have gone on to huge success in business. What is even more significant is that some of these successful entrepreneurs returned this week to share their experiences with our new bootcamp graduates, to offer guidance on how to take an idea and transform it into a business proposition.
Former BT Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year 2016 and CEO and founder of Evervault, Shane Curran was one of the speakers at this week’s Bootcamp. He said, “Participating in the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp in 2017 was a great springboard on my journey as an entrepreneur and it helped me to understand the process of turning novel scientific and technological ideas into a business with strong commercial potential. Since the BT Business Bootcamp, I have started a company called Evervault which evolved from my research for the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in 2017 and aims to solve the problem of data privacy for companies, in an era where they struggle to protect their customers' information.”
For more information, visit https://btyoungscientist.com/btys-business-bootcamp/. Alternatively, check out http://www.facebook.com/BTYSTE, or follow on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/btyste.
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