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BTYSTE Mar 08, 2022

Annual BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp returns to UCD

Bootcamp credited with nurturing many of Ireland’s young entrepreneurs

A group of Ireland’s future innovators and entrepreneurs will gather at UCD from March 7th-10th to take part in the annual BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp.

The BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was established in 2010 by BT and is delivered in partnership with Nova UCD to give students the commercialisation skills they need to develop their BT Young Scientist & Technology project ideas into viable business ventures.

A total of 30 students from eight counties, including winners of the 58th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2022, Aditya Joshi and Aditya Kumar, will take part in the four-day event in the hopes of claiming the highly coveted titles of “Best Group” and “Best Individual”.

All those taking part in the Bootcamp this year were participants in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, held virtually in January, and have been selected from the pool of prize winners shortlisted from special awards, category winners and top four award recipients.

The students will be working throughout the week on six projects, selected by the judges from the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2022. A member of the original project team will work with four other Bootcamp students on their project, and they will develop the idea further based on the workshops they take part in throughout the week.

The students will experience first-hand the world of technology, commercialisation, business propositions and entrepreneurship, with the culmination of the four-day programme seeing the students pitching their ideas to an expert panel of judges.

Speaking ahead of the 2022 BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp, Shay Walsh, Managing Director at BT Ireland and one of this year’s judges said, “The BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp has been a core part of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition since it was first established in 2010. Through the programme we aim to create a positive environment to encourage Ireland’s young entrepreneurs to develop their skills and hone their talents into developing successful enterprises.

The Bootcamp is one of the many ways that we at BT are supporting the development of digital and professional skills in young people – skills that are critical to our growing digital society and the future global workplace. I’m looking forward to meeting all our young entrepreneurs this week and learning more about the exciting projects they are working on.”

As well as the key business and commercialisation skills taught to students, there will be a number of fascinating guest speakers at Bootcamp, including:

  • Shane Curran – Winner of the BTYSTE 2016 and founder of Evervault
  • Kate & Annie Madden – Fenuhealth and former BTYSTE award winners
  • Danny Hobbs – Betterexaminations.ie & Protex AI and former BTYSTE award winner
  • Rhona Togher – Restored Hearing (now known as Lios) and former BTYSTE award winner

Over the years, a number of past participants of the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs and household names, with the most noted enterprises to date being Evervault, betterexaminations.ie and Protex AI.

For more information, please visit www.btyoungscientist.com or follow @BTYSTE on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or Snapchat (username BTYSTE).