NCI Project Showcase - School of Computing

Today I had the pleasure to attend the National College of Ireland Project Showcase from the final year students within the School of Computing. I've done some workshops over the past few months with some of these students in order to get their CV together and preparing properly for interviews. It was good today to see some of what they have accomplished from the past 4 years. It was a well organised event and had some industry leaders sponsoring it including Citi, Workday and Singlepoint. 

I was impressed with a number of the projects which ranged from IOT devices to help with your children through to improving your mental health but wanted to do a mini-showcase on a few that stood out to me. 

The first was by Keith Hui who's project title Auto Nagios stood out to me initially as it utilised common technologies I recruit for but the inspiration about the project was borne out of his previous work experience and wanted to automate a part of his role that was not only eating into his own time but also relied on colleagues to oversee the changes that needed to happen so also used up their valuable time. Keith developed a system that monitors virtual servers within it's network and the unique feature automatically resolves disk space issues within the servers by removing caches, logs etc. A simple but effective idea. 

The second was by Amy Siggins whose Project title was Jump Scan. This was an idea that would mean that commuters through the use of a QR code could use their phones instead of leapcards to use on any mode of public transport as well as accessing timetables and using PayPal for top-ups. What I loved about this project was that one of the biggest potential stumbling blocks I could see straight away was a cracked screen (we've all been there) and it had been tested and worked with one. 

Third project was by Jessica Bankole who created an appointment booking system for medical centres which would give patients real time availability to book appointments creating a system that would also alert patients to any cancelations of appointments and an option to pay. 

Fourth project was by Angela Darel whose Project Med Finder really blew me away. This was an application that would allow people be able to safely secure any medication they may need in a different country while challenging. It would list what your prescribed drug was known by locally as well as giving alternatives based on what the active ingredients are. It also listed whether a prescription was required in that country for the drug. Very useful and one that I hope will see active very soon.

Last and by no means least as it was one of the prize winners on the day was a project called The Sleep Lab - sleep monitor by Hannah Mulligan. This was an IOT system used to monitor the sleep environment of the user. Inspired by the data gathered from her FitBit Hannah wanted to dig deeper on the results she was seeing and through the device could monitor Room Temp/Humidity, Motion, Sound, Noise and Light within the users sleeping environment. 

I was really impressed with them all and as Dave Thompson, CAO within the Citi Innovation Lab and one of it's founders, who was the key note speaker, said the strides made by these students and standards set in innovation by them was remarkable.

Well done again to all at NCI for organising the event and if you want to have a peak at what else was there you can do so by visiting https://lnkd.in/ewYivie