PICTURE: Abbey school students recognised at prestigious UL Awards
Well done!
Congratulations to Shane O’Connor and Liam Carew, students of The Abbey School, for yet another outstanding award, at the the Immersive Software Engineering TECS Awards held at the University of Limerick on Thursday, January 6, 2022.
TECS is a competition for post-primary students throughout Ireland.
This competition was organised by the ISE (Immersive Software Engineering) programme at the University of Limerick. The programme is supported by John Collison, President of Stripe, the Irish-American payment processing platform.
Codenamed TECS (Technologists, Engineers, Creatives and Scientists) the competition aimed to find Ireland’s next technology and business superstars.
The TECS programme was designed to support these students in becoming the next generation of leaders. Over a four week period, the contestants were asked to share the progress they had made.
They then received constructive feedback from a world class mentor.
The skills of development and improvement are vital in the modern world of software engineering. The projects that had made the most significant progress at the end of the four week period were then chosen to receive an award.
Winners attended a special invite-only event in the University of Limerick Concert Hall.
The guest speakers included; John Collison, President of Stripe, Professor Kerstin Mey, President of the University of Limerick, Dr Patricia Scanlan, Founder and CEO of Soapbox Labs and Professor Stephen Kinsella, Professor of Economics in UL and Co-Director of ISE.
The project prepared and submitted by Shane and Liam was called “Assessing the Impact of Second Level Education on Key Aspects of Adolescents’ Life and Development”.
The project was chosen for an award based on the immense progress made and adaption to feedback from their mentors.
Professor Stephen Kinsella of UL said that “the standard was set high for this project. Shane and Liam showed a great drive and ability to work independently in order to produce work of a very high quality.”
Speaking to the prize winners John Collison said that he hopes that this programme will leap forward the delivery of software engineering education.
“We are just so blown away by the projects. We would encourage you all to consider careers in software engineering, however you choose to do that. We think it is a fabulous career, we think it is one of the best kept secrets and so we would love to have you here at UL, or however you choose to do that.”