22 March, 2021

Congratulations to MTU engineering and business students Rosha Courtney, Alexander Griciunas, Orlaith McGowan, and Meg Ryan who topped their division at ENGCOMM 2021, finishing third overall, in this international competition, hotly contested by Universities from around the world.

ENGCOMM is a global competition for engineering and commerce undergraduate students to jointly create solutions to industry challenges and pitch them to an expert judging panel. The motivation for such a competition comes from the real-world nature of work, which is increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative, rather than professionals operating in individual siloes.

The competition consists of a series of ‘cases’, challenging teams to draw on their individual areas of training, and together create solutions that are both technical and commercial in nature. The format fits naturally with the training students receive in design thinking and innovative product development at MTU – except in very much a ‘hothouse’ competition environment, with tight time limits on the whole process from brainstorming initial ideas, through to creating and pitching a focussed techno-economic proposal.

ENGCOMM is normally held on the campus of Concordia University, Montreal, but this year the event moved online, placing severe restrictions on the team members, who were essentially under continuous online observation for the duration of their challenges. It also deprived presenters of the ‘live’ feedback and interaction that goes with in-person pitching – which was an unexpected aspect to be overcome.

The competition’s preliminary round was held in January, with MTU team, competing under the name "Glas Logic", successfully progressed to the final 16 main ENGCOMM2021 event, which was held from 22nd to 27th of February. This was a significant achievement, placing the team in elite company alongside universities from Canada, Egypt, Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as Ireland. The final 16 teams were divided into four divisions comprised of four university teams. The MTU team were in Division 1 of the ‘Group Stage’, together with McGill University (Montreal), University of South Carolina, and University of Calgary.

Each team worked on three cases for six hours (12 hours for the last case) before presenting their solutions to University of Concordia faculty members and industry sponsors who had set the tasks based on real-life challenges for the companies. These sponsors included  Accenture, KPMG, Genetec, Workden and L3Harris. In addition to pitching their new product idea and design, presentations had to address a wide range of considerations that affect the rollout of a new product: financial, marketing, ethics, sustainability, implementation & logistics. 

Glas Logic topped their division and were then in the last four for the final stage. Their final case resulted in the team pitching an idea to use IR cameras with visible-range photo images, combined with AI, to detect potentially negative emotions and/or intentions in students in school settings. Based on their performance over the entire event, they achieved a rank of 3rd place overall, behind the University of Alberta (1st), and UCD (2nd), with only a single point separating second and third place.

MTU colleagues from across both faculties at the Cork campus can also be congratulated, since the success has been in large measure due to the encouragement and support of the team’s lecturers and mentors from different facets of the university; namely Paul Keane, Dr Hugh O' Donnell, Carole O' Leary, and Dr Angela Wright; as well as Mike McGrath, Scott McGowan and Lisa Murphy.

Congratulations to them and to the Glas Logic team for this significant achievement!

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