The final year project show for engineering and computing students at National College of Ireland (NCI) was attended by more than 50 prospective employers ranging from SAP and Workday to Citi and CR2.
On show, was a varied collection of applications, web apps, games and more that covered a wide range of topics, from a mobile app that kept people abreast of the Irish motorcycle road racing scene to project on participation of women in the ICT workforce.
Of note were the number of projects that were closely aligned with industry and with immediate practical application, characterised by Claudia Hocke in her final year of the BSc. (Hons) in Business Information Systems at NCI. Hocke developed an application called Reperio, which helps mobile operators counteract GSM subscription fraud by pre-processing call data into a database which can then be used to analyse call patterns. Losses through this type of fraud amounted to $5.22 billion (€3.83 billion) in 2013, which ranks it in the top five fraud activities among global telecom revenues.
“Developing this solution has helped me gain a more in-depth understanding of modern telecommunications,” said Hocke, “and has allowed me to improve my analytical skills. While it was challenging at times, it has strengthened my interest in working in the data analytics field.”
Katie Donohoe’s mobile app, Rapid Refund, allows user to transfer the balance from their refund tickets directly to their Leap cards, removing the need to issue receipts for change which have then to be redeemed at an office.
In her final year of the BA (Hons) in Technology Management at NCI, Donohoe said “Rapid Refund has been a challenging yet rewarding project. Alongside the app, I have conducted research which proves how Rapid Refund can benefit both Dublin Bus as a company and their customers. There has been an extremely positive reaction to this project with many people asking when the app will be available”
Donohoe has already accepted a place on Dell’s Inside Sales graduate programme but still has ambitions for her app to become fully fledged service with Dublin Bus.
Developing this solution has helped me gain a more in-depth understanding of modern telecommunications
The gaming side of the industry was well represented, most notably by Adam Cody’s role-playing game, “Journey of the Lost”. Created using the Unity 4.1 platform, the game uses a dynamic day and night cycle in which a personalised character is faced with enemy characters controlled by finite state machines, with adaptive AI and a highly customisable environment.
“With the technology landscape growing and shifting so rapidly we are delighted to showcase the high calibre and broad range of development work of our computing graduates,” said Pramod Pathak, dean of the School of Computing at National College of Ireland.
“Their diverse work in areas like cloud computing, gaming and multimedia, software systems and more really demonstrates the huge opportunities available for skilled graduates in this industry in Ireland.”
“Our focus within NCI Careers is employability and we work innovatively to ensure our students are the most employable in Ireland,” Caroline Kennedy, Careers and Opportunities officer, NCI. “The most recent Sunday Times league tables highlighted NCI as having ‘one of the most consistent and best graduate employment records’ and the NCI Careers Office was delighted to win the National AHECS Gold award for employability for both 2013 and 2014.
“We are constantly looking for effective ways to promote our students to industry and this showcase is a perfect opportunity to get our students’ work in front of prospective employers. We’re delighted to see such high levels of interest and engagement from industry – last years’ showcase resulted in a number of graduate job offers and we’re excited to build on this momentum.”
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