TU Dublin Champions Of ESB Inter-Colleges Challenge
A cross-disciplinary team of Mechanical Engineering and Business students have been crowned Champions of the ESB Inter-Colleges Challenge 2019.
At a special ceremony in the University's flagship campus, Samuel Berry, Pierce Blackmore, Jake Rogers and Sanchit Aggarwal were presented with the ESB Inter-College Challenge McLoughlin Perpetual Trophy by Denis Kelly (ESB), which was inspired by a young and visionary Irish graduate of UCD and NUIG, Dr Thomas McLaughlin and his work on the Shannon Scheme. Its cylindrical shape is inspired by the penstocks at Ardnacrusha which is etched with a map of the roads, rivers, canals and fields of the Shannon area. The trophy was created by award-winning sculpture Michelle Byrne, in the dark Limestone of Freshford in County Kilkenny.
Forty students from ten colleges across Ireland participated in the competition to develop a metropolitan transport system for 2040, which would substantially reduce traffic in cities, improve air quality and the quality of life for citizens. The competition took place in a high pressure setting at the Irish Management Institute (IMI) over the course of Thursday 31st October and Friday 1st November, with each team designing, costing and building a proposal for Cork, Limerick, Belfast or Galway to pitch to an expert panel.
Samuel Berry, Pierce Blackmore, Jake Rogers and Sanchit Aggarwal will now go on to represent Ireland at the international engineering and commerce competition ENGCOMM 2020 in Montreal. The team was mentored and coached by Dr Sajad Alimohammadi and Professor David Kennedy from the School of Mechanical & Design Engineering and Dr Eoghan O’Grady from the College of Business.
ESB Inter-College Challenge: Hosted by ESB for the last five years, this competition is open to third-level colleges with teams typically comprising of three engineering and one commerce student. ESB sponsors the winning team to represent Ireland in the international competition in Montreal in 2020 with the winning team also receiving placements in the organisation. This year’s challenge was based on the new ESB Strategy for a Brighter Future and focused on the challenge of enabling the low carbon citizen of the future. It was a challenging case that tested the engineering, commercial and marketing skills of all the teams and will be good preparation for the international competition at EngCommm 2020 in Montreal, Canada.