Because the 12 months attracts to an in depth, it’s time to mirror on a number of the best accomplishments from throughout the science and expertise sectors.
It’s been fairly the 12 months for the sci-tech business, from the ups and downs that got here with AI mannequin launches (keep in mind when Google recommended placing glue on a pizza?) to a significant Crowdstrike outage that resulted within the ‘blue display of dying’ for thousands and thousands of working methods.
However for a lot of inside the sci-tech sector, it has additionally been a 12 months for celebration. This 12 months noticed each fresh-faced founders and business veterans honoured with a wide range of prestigious awards all year long.
Whereas we couldn’t hope to cowl each single one, we determined to convey you the highlights with a listing of 10 spectacular award winners, together with just a few honourable mentions to the businesses that additionally had an opportunity to shine.
Seán O’Sullivan
Kicking off 2024 was an annual spotlight for Eire with the BT Younger Scientist and Know-how Exhibition.
As we head into the twenty fifth anniversary of BT being the custodian of the occasion, the 2024 winner Seán O’Sullivan was a must-mention.
The 17-year-old scholar took dwelling the highest prize for his extremely topical mission, VerifyMe: A New Strategy to Authorship Attribution within the Publish-ChatGPT Period.
This mission was impressed by the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI bot and the challenges of sorting actual from faux content material within the context of the delicate communication capabilities of enormous language fashions (LLMs).
Dr Alessandra Sala
Esteemed AI skilled Dr Alessandra Sala is the senior director of AI and knowledge science in Shutterstock and has been devoted to bridging the hole between innovation and real-world purposes over her profession of greater than 15 years.
Due to this fact, it’s no marvel that she acquired the Grace Hopper Award at this 12 months’s Range in Tech Awards.
Sala is the worldwide president of Ladies in AI, working with a powerful neighborhood of girls to foster range, inclusion and equality for ladies and minorities whereas encouraging a world moral strategy in AI.
Geoffrey Hinton
In April of this 12 months, Geoffrey Hinton, a famend pioneer of AI analysis, was awarded the Ulysses Medal by College School Dublin (UCD) for his contributions to society.
Hinton’s analysis paved the best way for the rise of generative AI, as these methods permit fashions like ChatGPT to be skilled on large quantities of knowledge to interpret prompts and generate responses.
He is called the godfather of AI for his work in these fields and was awarded the best honour UCD can bestow for his numerous achievements.
Shorla Oncology founders
Sharon Cunningham and Orlaith Ryan gone from power to power with their pharma firm Shorla Oncology.
Headquartered in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Shorla Oncology was based in 2018 to develop and commercialise modern oncology medication for orphan and paediatric cancers.
Having raised $35m in a Collection B funding spherical final 12 months, the founders went on to be named the named the 2024 EY Entrepreneurs of the 12 months. Cunningham and Ryan have been additionally named as winners within the rising class at this 12 months’s ceremony.
Dr Eamonn Keogh and John Hartnett
As each of those males gained the Science Basis Eire annual St Patrick’s Day medal this 12 months, we’re counting them as one entry on the record.
The award is given to recognise the awardees’ assist in growing the analysis ecosystem in Eire and past.
Keogh is a distinguished professor on the Division of Pc Science in College of California and a world skilled in knowledge mining and machine studying.
Hartnett is a veteran within the expertise business from Limerick who helps firms as they transition from schooling and analysis to start-up. Now primarily based in California, Hartnett additionally based the Irish Know-how Management Group, a community of world Irish expertise leaders that fosters hyperlinks between the US and Eire.
Olivia Humphreys
Olivia Humphreys made historical past this 12 months by changing into the primary Irish international winner of the James Dyson Award for the ‘medical units’ class.
The College of Limerick graduate gained the distinguished award for her product Athena – a cell scalp-cooling invention for sufferers present process chemotherapy.
The thought for Athena got here as Humphreys witnessed her mom’s wrestle with most cancers in 2019. Cooling the blood vessels within the scalp can restrict blood circulation to the world. Nevertheless, the remedy is pricey and sparsely out there in Eire.
Avi Wigderson
This 12 months’s winner of the ACM AM Turing Award – often known as the ‘Nobel Prize of computing’ – was awarded to Avi Wigderson for serving to to reshape our understanding of the function of randomness in computation.
His landmark work on this space revolutionised our understanding of randomness in each pc science and arithmetic and has been key to the event of a number of developments in computing, from cloud networks to cryptography strategies.
In addition to his groundbreaking contributions to computing, Wigderson is recognised as a mentor and colleague who has suggested many younger researchers.
Evanna Winters
The Mary Mulvihill Award is given out in honour of the late science journalist and creator Mary Mulvihill. The award was established to encourage third-level college students to embrace science communication and foster their creativity.
This 12 months’s awardee was Mayo native Evanna Winters, who wrote an illustrated essay on the theme of intelligence, entitled ‘A Stroll within the Woods’.
Her work explored the subterranean fungal community that extends beneath the forest ground and the way this intensive system reveals a significant type of interconnectivity and communication, difficult our typical understanding of intelligence.
Prof Colm Mulcahy
As a part of Maths Week in October, Prof Colm Mulcahy grew to become this 12 months’s recipient of the Maths Week Eire Award for his contribution to elevating public consciousness of maths.
The internationally recognised mathematician is a professor emeritus of arithmetic at Spelman School in Atlanta, Georgia, the place he has lectured for greater than 30 years.
Over the course of his profession, Mulcahy has used modern methods to teach, together with ‘mathemagical’ displays that mix maths ideas with the enjoyable of puzzles and card methods – he even goes by CardColm on his personal weblog.
Dr Sheila Donegan of Maths Week Eire stated Mulcahy is a “shining instance” of enthusiasm for maths. “His unwavering dedication to creating maths relatable and accessible units him aside,” she stated.
Heidi Davis
Heidi Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Peri, which develops an AI-powered wearable gadget to assist handle perimenopause signs.
She gained this 12 months’s Enterprise Eire Excessive-Potential Begin-Up (HPSU) Founding father of the 12 months Award.
With an instructional background in diet and molecular medication, Davis additionally has intensive expertise bringing merchandise from idea to launch.
On her win, Davis shared that she is “deeply honoured” to obtain this award, notably because the nominees are chosen by founder-peers.
6 firm honourable mentions
Freudenberg Medical
Freudenberg Medical, companions with companies to supply medical gadget manufacturing providers together with catheters, implantable medical units, drug coating and electrically conductive silicone which protects medical wearables from grime and water.
The corporate gained the title of the 2024 Medtech Firm of the 12 months for “remodeling healthcare” by way of gamified coaching.
Wayflyer
Having reached unicorn standing in 2022 and touchdown $1bn in capital final 12 months, Wayflyer has gone from power to power.
The e-commerce financing start-up, which gives revenue-based funding to start-ups, bagged the highest prize at this 12 months’s Deloitte Know-how Quick 50 Awards.
Alkimii
Alkimii, which specialises in B2B software program for the hospitality business was named because the Digital Know-how Firm of the 12 months on the annual Know-how Eire Trade Awards.
Based on the judges, the enterprise demonstrated “a deep understanding of their enterprise area and aggressive panorama”.
XOcean
XOcean, which makes use of robots to gather ocean knowledge, has had a very robust 12 months, having scored €30m in a Collection B funding spherical led by Venturewave Capital.
The corporate then went on to win the Innovation of the 12 months Award on the fiftieth Enterprise & Finance Awards, in affiliation with KPMG Eire
Fexco
Based in 1981, Fexco was the primary to get a international change licence as a non-bank in Eire. It operates in additional than 50 international locations and employs greater than 2,900 folks worldwide.
Earlier this 12 months the McCarthy household behind the model have been the recipients of the Tech Individual of the 12 months Award on the 2024 Tech Trade Alliance Leaders Awards and the corporate additionally gained the Irish Instances Innovation of the 12 months award.
Equal1
Final however not at all least is Equal1, a famous person quantum start-up that has had a large 12 months of success.
In the summertime of this 12 months, the UCD spin-out was declared this 12 months’s winner of the Quantum Enterprise Innovation and Development prize, a prestigious Institute of Physics award for its developments in quantum computing. The corporate then went on to strike a deal to work with Nvidia on quantum tech.
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