The Student Innovators (Sinn2018) was successfully held on May 4, 2018 at the University of Cyprus. Sinn2018 is an Innovation and Entrepreneurship competition where students from the University of Cyprus had the opportunity to present creative ideas and innovative solutions (early stage) in a 5-minute “pitch” presentation to a panel of judges and the audience. The competition was organized by the Center for Entrepreneurship (C4E) and the Department of Business and Public Administration of the University of Cyprus.
A respectable share of the students and teams who participated in the competition had developed their ideas during the Entrepreneurship courses of the Department of Business and Public Administration and in seminars and workshops offered by the Centre for Entrepreneurship.
For the Student Innovators Competition (Sinn2018), 34 applications were submitted by teams and individuals of which eleven were invited to present their ideas to the final competition. The panel of judges was consisted by key people from the Cypriot business ecosystem, academics and entrepreneurship experts: Andreas Koupparis, Executive Director of CYBAN Cyprus Business Angels Network, Andreas Papadopoulos, President of Junior Achievement Cyprus and Strategic Development Director of the Hellenic Bank, Theodosis Tripeniotis, Assistant Professor of Physics and Member of the Entrepreneurship Council, Panos Markopoulos, Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Mentor of C4E, Anastasia Konstantinou, Senior Officer of the Innovation Management Unit of the University of Cyprus, C4E collaborator and Mentor of C4E, and Wael Almasri - Postgraduate Student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Founder SoilTron, and member of NestFold group.
The evaluation criteria included: Creativity and innovation, Motivation, Feasibility of the idea, Teamwork, Impact / Value creation for clients, Definition the market: Understanding the market potential of their idea, Commercial potential, Communication Skills / Science Communication, Basic Management Skills.
The first prize was awarded to the FHC (FEEL - HEAR - CARE) team consisting of Eleni Kelli - Department of Chemistry, Kyriakos Zantis – Department of Computer Science, Maria Daniil - Department of Business and Public Administration and Andreas Gelasis and Avgousinos Vitalis from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. FHC is an idea about the development of a device that will recognize the clamor of babies and transform it into a vibration on a wearable and waterproof bracelet.
The second prize was awarded to AlignR, a group of 5 students from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Alexis Othonos, Andreas Karkotis, Yannis Fermanis, Marios Nicolaou and Michalis Koushappas. AlignR is a smart and flexible system that includes multiple features aimed towards alleviating parking congestion throughout Cyprus. In short the AlignR systems can dynamically calculate the optimal placement for vehicle parking and assists users. Additionally can provide information for parking availability in nearby places.
The third prize was given to Elena Koutkoukou from the Computer Science Department for her idea MediMate. Medimate is about developing a mobile application for identifying pharmaceutical brand names in different countries.
The students of the three winning teams won the GrantXpert Award from GrantXpert Consulting, a free workshop on "Identifying and validating the value proposition of your business plan". The CYBAN - Cyprus Business Angels Network Award was awarded to Elena Koutkoukou for the MediMate project.
Within the context of Sinn2018, the selection of the European Innovation Academy (EIA) Scholarships, specifically the C4E Young Scholars and the C4E Young Scholar - Rector's Award have been carried out. The scholarships were awarded to Elena Kelliri from the Department of Chemistry and Odysseus Economides from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The C4E Young Scholar - Rector's Award was awarded to Elena Kouttoukou from the Department of Computer Science. The scholarships are funded by the University of Cyprus with the generous support of the Aegean Airlines.
C4E Young Scholars are students of the University of Cyprus, who are selected for the last two years within an internal competition to receive a scholarship for participation in the European Innovation Academy (EIA) an extreme entrepreneurship accelerator program. EIA educational programs are jointly developed with professionals of world class partner universities and companies: UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Google, Amadeus, CA and many others. Future entrepreneurs and business leaders are immersed in a multicultural ecosystem of 4000+ alumni and faculty from 75 different nationalities. The entrepreneurship education at EIA gives every participant the opportunity to be immersed in the extreme international, multicultural and interdisciplinary start-up environment.
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