UTT's Val­sayn Cam­pus buzzed from two days of ex­cit­ing com­pe­ti­tion which cul­mi­nat­ed with an awards cer­e­mo­ny for UTT's IDEAS com­pe­ti­tion on March 6. Dr Fazal Ali, act­ing pres­i­dent and provost of UTT, was on hand to con­grat­u­late the 22 fi­nal­ists se­lect­ed to pitch their ideas from among 289 en­tries in eight cat­e­gories.

In­ter­nal­ly-spon­sored through UTT's Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment and Mar­ket­ing Unit, the Uni­ver­si­ty's fifth IDEAS Com­pe­ti­tion of­fered $30,000 in prize mon­ey to com­peti­tors sub­mit­ting a 300-word ab­stract and de­liv­er­ing a three-minute el­e­va­tor pitch to bring their ideas to life for a pan­el of judges from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ty en­tre­pre­neur­ship fac­ul­ty.

UTT's IDEAS Com­pe­ti­tion, de­signed to chan­nel the Uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty's vast tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty in­to ideas for in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts and ser­vices, gar­ners wide in­ter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion.Pro­fes­sor Denise Thomp­son re­count­ed its phe­nom­e­nal growth from "15 ideas from the third co­hort of the MSc in In­dus­tri­al In­no­va­tion, En­tre­pre­neur­ship and Man­age­ment (IIEM) stu­dents, to 289 en­tries from stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff across all cam­pus­es and dis­ci­plines."

These UTT com­pe­ti­tions and their use of iS­tart soft­ware tech­nol­o­gy from the Kauff­man Foun­da­tion (www.iS­tart.org) to man­age the com­pe­ti­tion process, gained in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion on the Huff­in­g­ton Post in­ter­na­tion­al news blog at http://www.huff­in­g­ton­post.com/lesa-mitchell/busi­ness-plan-com­pe­ti­tion_b_871799.html

Grand prize win­ners are:

�2 1st prize for IPAD–Ameer Khan (Ther­mo­form­ing a leaf-shaped dis­pos­able plate)

�2 2nd prize for Lap­top–Mosi De­noon (So­lar Mo­bile Cel­lu­lar)

�2 3rd prize for Mi­ni Tablet–Kel­lon Marechaeu (Nat­ur­al Ni­trates Ltd.)

Spe­cial prize win­ners:

�2 Re­search Com­mer­cial­iza­tion–Alysia Alexan­der (Elec­tro-Pa­tient)

�2 In­no­v­a­tive ICT Ap­pli­ca­tion–Mosi De­noon (So­lar Charge­able Mo­bile Cel­lu­lar)

�2 Agri­cul­ture/Agri-Pro­cess­ing–Kel­lon Marechaeu (Nat­ur­al Ni­trates Ltd)

�2 Arts, Cul­ture and Fash­ion–Shawn De Fre­itas (Din­gole)

�2 Man­u­fac­tur­ing–Sayyad Ma­ha­boob (Con­trol Tech­nolo­gies Ltd.)

�2 Sport and Health–Aaron Doug Deen (Zboze)

�2 Staff/Fac­ul­ty–Josanne Arnold (Green­house Or­gan­ic Tech­nolo­gies)

�2 Oth­er–Ameer Khan (Ther­mo­form­ing a leaf-shaped dis­pos­able plate)