Sign of the times at Maynooth

Net results:Students' software entry in global contest has creative merit and commercial potential

While other university students lounge about and enjoy the summer, a group from NUI Maynooth will be squaring off before their computer screens in a bid to win a $25,000 (€18,400) top prize for an educational software project.

The three - graduate student Dan Kelly, and undergrads Eric McClean and Cathal Coffey - took home first prize last week in the Irish leg of the Imagine Cup (www.imaginecup.com), an annual international technology competition for students, sponsored by Microsoft.

Going since 2003, the Imagine Cup has a different theme each year and third-level students compete across a range of categories. The competition aims to design a software project that fits the theme but also has great creative merit and commercial potential.

This is the first year Ireland will field a team to the international finals in Seoul, South Korea, where the Maynooth men will face about 50 international teams. The rewards for placing in the top three at this level are significant - the winners will get $25,000 and the chance to gain professional entrepreneurial skills and perhaps commercialise their product.

Even the third place team at the final wins $10,000. The best teams also get the chance to participate in a joint programme with BT called the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator, where some teams will work with Microsoft and BT advisers to further develop their software projects and business plans.

I spoke to McClean and the team's academic mentor, computer science lecturer Tom Lysaght at NUI Maynooth in advance of the competition and met up with Lysaght and student Dan Kelly afterwards.

To say they were over the moon with their result after last week's final would be an understatement - Kelly was simply thrilled their project was chosen and said the chance to focus on a real world project gave all of them fresh skills and abilities that generally don't come from classwork.

And of course, he said they were all very excited to be heading for Seoul - even if it means a tough grind of hammering their project into a polished working application over the summer.

The Maynooth team's project is based around motion capture technology, the centre of Kelly's research and has a simple premise - teaching sign language.

Kelly and McClean say they went out to St Joseph's School for the Deaf in Cabra, Dublin, to talk to people and see if the idea had merit.

They had thought there would be some existing software programmes they could view that might give them an idea of what was in the market and how they might improve on those concepts.

To their surprise, they found there was virtually nothing of the sort. And they learned that many would welcome such a programme - especially the family and friends of deaf people and anyone who might need or want to be able to communicate by signing.

As the students noted in their project application, many deaf people find that outside their circle of deaf friends and some of their family, very few know sign language. A computer-based learning programme would enable many more people to acquire capabilities in the language than could attend classes.

With the program, learners can watch a sign being demonstrated and then will pull on a colour-coded glove to practice the sign back before a webcam. The computer then reads the accuracy of the sign by tracking the colours on the glove, and gives the learner feedback.

Liam Cronin, the Microsoft Imagine Cup programme manager, said he felt the quality of all the finalist entries was very high and was confident that Irish students could go up against the best internationally. If anything, he said, he felt Ireland's problem was a tendency not to realise just how good its programmers are.

Cronin said Microsoft had about 200 students apply for the Irish competition, which he thinks is excellent for its first year. The 10 Irish finalists - of which three were from Maynooth - all came from institutes and universities with a strong faculty support and mentors, he said.

Lysaght certainly fits that description: an energetic and enthusiastic lecturer who has very clear ideas on the professional and personal benefits to students of participating in such an event: learning how to design real world applications, leaning to work in a team, and honing skills against the best the country, and now the world, can throw at them. As he told me last week: "It's their chance to make a mark. They want to be winners." They already are here. Now, onward to South Korea to take on the world.

klillington@irish-times.ie, blog: www.techno-culture.com