MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month Kicks Off With 63 Events Taking Place Across Cork and Kerry

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MTU’s annual Innovation and Enterprise Month is taking place throughout March, with 63 events being hosted across the university’s six campuses in Cork and Kerry.

Carole O’Leary, Regional Programme Manager for 3rd Level Student Entrepreneurship at MTU, who is organising the month-long series of events, said: “We are delighted with the huge level of engagement by MTU students, staff, and external partners in this year’s MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month. The diverse array of innovative and entrepreneurial projects and activities on the agenda is testament to MTU’s thriving research, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem which encourages collaboration and expertise across science, engineering, business, social sciences, humanities, creative and performing arts and media.”

Many of the events are multi-disciplinary and include exciting collaborations between MTU’s Cork and Kerry research centres and the MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, MTU Cork School of Music, MTU Architecture Factory and the NMCI (National Maritime College of Ireland), as well as student and staff collaborations with key industry stakeholders throughout the South West.

Topics on the agenda this year include sustainability and climate change action, food innovation, AgriTech, physical data representation, innovation in art, theatre, and musical development, AR (Artificial Reality) and ER (Extended Reality), entrepreneurship, design, health and fitness.

A key event is the MTU Innovation Awards, with an Opening Ceremony Welcome by MTU President, Professor Maggie Cusack. The MTU Innovation Awards acknowledge and recognise the work that MTU staff put into their innovations during 2022 and raise awareness of the wider innovation activity that is happening across MTU and the ongoing development of MTU research with intellectual property and commercial potential.

For further information on all MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month 2023 events taking place, and to register for events, please see MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month Agenda/Registration.

Events being held throughout MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month

Sustainability is a hot topic this year with MTU’s Green Campus Week series of events aimed at promoting awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals across the university. On the food front, the Food Sustainability Day of Events: Talks, Workshops and Student Competition aims to optimise engagement and interest within the area of food sustainability and explore how we as individuals can play our part to better manage this key factor and move forward within the food industry. 

For those interested in sustainability in the AgriTech industry, the Future Sustainable Agriculture and Education event will feature presentations by leading researchers in the field, with a focus on sustainable forage for animals, soil management, biogas systems and biodiversity, and will highlight leading measures vital to Ireland’s sustainability commitments.  Also, of interest to the AgriTech sector, the Technologies In Agriculture Industry Day series of events aims to inspire and connect Ireland's AgriTech industry with business services and projects to accelerate sustainable growth. These events will showcase and enable connections with business support service providers and student/researcher projects. 

In an exciting collaboration between the Nimbus Research Centre and MTU’s Crawford College of Art and Design students, ‘Let’s get physical: a sustainable approach to physical data representation’ will explore how sustainable materials can be used to represent data in the physical world.

Musical development is also high on the agenda this year. In Artemis Fowl - A Musical Development, MTU Cork School of Music students will be collaborating with a musical theatre industry team to record a new musical based on the Artemis Fowl books by international best-selling author, Eoin Colfer. This event will provide direct training for students in workshopping and developing new musical theatre.

In an exciting blend of the old and new, MTU Cork School of Music's trad ensemble, Bruach, are collaborating with NExIS, to produce Réaltacht - Traditional Irish music performances in Extended Reality which will be presented in virtual versions in three well know venues and in public spaces through XR headsets on several MTU campuses. NExIS is a strategic collaboration between extended reality technology interest groups across MTU at the AgriTech Centre of Excellence (ACE), the Nimbus Research Centre, the Cork School of Music and the NMCI.

The NExIS team will also be hosting MTU-Verse: MTU meets in the Metaverse, bringing together MTU staff and students at remote locations across Cork and Kerry campuses where they will collaborate for the first time in shared online virtual environments using Quest 2 Virtual Reality headsets.

In another inspiring collaboration, Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading contemporary music ensemble, will be performing the work of Cork School of Music students in the MTU Curtis Auditorium, following a series of virtual and in-person composition workshops with the students.

On the theatre front, MTU Cork School of Music and Dance Cork Firkin Crane are hosting a Physical Theatre Workshop with award-winning actor, director and writer, Mikel Murfi, for students from BA Theatre amd Drama Studies and BA Musical Theatre courses. There is also a Showreel Workshop for Performing Arts Students that will help students to promote themselves professionally by providing the technological know-how to help them be the entrepreneurs of their own careers.

MTU’s Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork School of Music and Cork Centre for Architectural Education are hosting a Post Graduate Research Symposium to provide students with an opportunity to meet, share, and discuss ongoing research projects in an informal network of fellow students and supervisors. This event will be followed by MAKE 23 Symposium, which will see anthropologists, architectural theorists, and artists gathering in Cork for this annual forum and will feature presentations that explore structure, landscape, and boundary, as key themes in the creation of architectural forms, art installations, and site-specific art practices.

Several competitions will be held throughout March, including an opportunity for secondary school students to win 3D printers and cash prizes by entering the MTU Schools Marine Electrical Sustainability and Innovation Design Competition, and the REEdI (Rethinking Engineering Education in Ireland) Innovation and Enterprise Flex (Future Learning Experience) Competition for current MTU staff, students, and future engineering students.

The Expand Your Horizons with Erasmus+ and Study Abroad Photo Competition will highlight opportunities for MTU students wishing to study in Europe the US or Canada, and a second photo competition, Trust – Sport As It Should Be, in conjunction with Sport4Impact and MTU's UNESCO Chair, is open to everyone with cash prizes to be won.

The finals of several ongoing student competitions will be held throughout the month, including the Headlines International Student Competition featuring international students from Ireland, Spain and Finland who will present their creative pitches about the next big ideas in health and food, and the Family and Children Competition for MTU students in the Departments of Sport Leisure and Childhood Studies, Applied Social Studies, and Social Sciences.

Also taking place are the finals and awards ceremonies for the MTU Prize for Innovation which awards cash prizes to student entrepreneurs whose inventions and business ideas are judged most creative, novel, innovative and likely to succeed in the marketplace, and the MTU Innovation Challenge, on which fifty students from MTU and Endicott College (USA) ) have been working on a cross campus, cross continent, and cross discipline basis to solve issues andchallenges posed by a number of external stakeholders.

Other events throughout the month of March include: Active Ageing 2023, Bkultured - Food Entrepreneur, Building A Collaborative All-Island Technical Network, Innovation in the Food Industry, Cantillon - Transforming Mindsets, Celebrating 10 years of Kerry Month of Enterprise, Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs, Design Thinking Workshops, Funds Careerathon, Health@MTU Industry Launch, Keep on Keeping Active, Launch of Creative Learning Space, Lead Your Tourism Business to a Sustainable Future, Leaving Certificate Physical Education: Applied Learning Event, Community Of Practice Workshops, Conversations in Design, Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainability Reporting for Enterprise, LinkedIn for Business Workshop, Logitech Visual Design Hackathon, MAPPING Opening Reception and Exhibition, Mentorship for Professional Communicators, MTU Student Business Hackathon, MTU Technology Gateways Seminar, Next Big Change Award Ceremony, Nutrition: Innovate to Improve, Techbrew – Intrapreneurship Growing Our Region, and User Experience Clinics

For further information on all MTU Innovation and Enterprise Month events taking place, and to register for events, please click the link below.

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