UCC Students win second prize in the highly prestigious IEEE/IBM Smarter Planet Challenge. In recognition of the demonstrable professional skills and commitment to “Changing the World”, the UCC interdisciplinary team (Herman Alex Jaeger-Team Leader, Fiona Edwards Murphy, Tadhg Lambe all Electrical and Electronic Engineering/School of Engineering , Merisa Bradley-Early, Childhood Studies/School of Applied Psychology, Andreea Zagoneanu-Occupational Therapy/School of Medicine) called “U-Play: Unified Networks for Playing with Toys” received a cheque of 4000USD and accolades from IEEE and IBM for their work that betters the humanity. The team is supervised by Dr. Emanuel Popovici (Lecturer Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Senior member of IEEE), and Dr Michele Magno (formerly with UCC, now with ETH Zurich) with great support from Dr. Marcin Szczerbinski (School of Applied Psychology). This is the second time a UCC team wins in the competition after 2011 when another team mentored by Dr. Popovici came first with the project named iCARE (Improved Health Care for Disadvantaged Communities). This award puts UCC among top Universities and also in a unique position of winning twice since the start of the competition in 2011.
Dr. Emanuel Popovici(Team Supervisor and Director of the Embedded Systems Group at UCC) comments:
"It is a great pleasure to supervise a team of such a caliber who put many extra curricular hours to bring U-Play project at this level. The students showed great technical skill but also ethical knowledge to address such a challenge which betters the humanity. Interdisciplinary approach was at the core of their approach and interaction was key for their success."
