Minister Simon Coveney with Deirdre Mortell (CONNECT Social Entrepreneur in Residence) and Jacquelline Fuller (Director of Google.org).
The winners of THINKTECH were announced by Minister Simon Coveney, TD, on Wednesday, 7 December 2016, at the Google Foundry in Dublin.
They are Dublin-based Foodcloud Hubs, which redirects surplus food from producers to foodbanks and charities using a simple app. The Alone platform, which uses various technologies to help older people live independently at home, and iScoil, which provides access to education for early school-leavers through online and personalised learning programmes, were also selected.
The three winning projects will each receive €210,000-€220,000 in financial and non-financial grants and join a five-month accelerator programme, starting in January, devised by Social Innovation Fund Ireland. This is supported by Google.org, the web giant’s philanthropic arm, and the Department of Housing.
An early-stage award of €100,000-plus membership of the accelerator programme was also granted to Space Engagers, a Dublin-based project which tackles homelessness via digital mapping.
THINKTECH, a €1 million tech-for-good initiative to support and grow ideas for a better Ireland, is a project of Social Innovation Fund Ireland whose CEO, Deirdre Mortell, is CONNECT’s Social Entrepreneur in Residence.
CONNECT is the world leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications. CONNECT is funded under the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres Programme and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund. We engage with over 35 companies including large multinationals, SMEs and start-ups. CONNECT brings together world-class expertise from ten Irish academic institutes to create a one-stop-shop for telecommunications research, development and innovation.
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