Teens put through paces at Bootcamp

Leeside students are on hand this week at the annual BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp. The aim of the bootcamp is to give students the commercialisation skills they need to develop their science and technology project ideas.

The culmination of the four-day programme today, Thursday, will see the students pitching their companies to an expert panel of judges including Dr Tony Scott, founder of the Young Scientist Exhibition; Ann O’Dea, Editor-at-large at Silicon Republic; Evelyn Smith, Senior Commercialisation Specialist at Enterprise Ireland and Shay Walsh, Managing Director at BT Ireland.

All those taking part in this year’s event were participants in the BT Young Scientist in January. Participants from Cork include Alan O'Sullivan and Cormac Harris, Mia Casey, Sylvie Plant, Emer Heery, Ben Loughnane, Thomas Cronin and Fionn O'Hanlon.

Now in its eleventh year, the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was established in 2010 by BT and is delivered in partnership with the team at UCD Research and Innovation.

Speaking at the kick-off of the 2020 BT Business Bootcamp Shay Walsh said: “The BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp has been an integral part of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition programme for eleven 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 will return here 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.”

For more information, visit btyoungscientist.com. You can also follow #BTYSTE and #CreateTodayShapeTomorrow to be part of the action.