Published on: Monday, 02 September 2019

Cork Institute of Technology & Ireland's Award Winning StrydeTech Team, under its leader Muireann Hickey, and product advancement coordinator Kevin Hayes, have been awarded First Place and Gold Medal at the Global Student Innovation Challenge held this year in Canberra, Australia, competing against students from all over the world.

The Global Competition is run in conjunction with the Annual International Convention on Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology (i-CREATe) and focuses on devising technical solutions to improve the quality of living for the elderly and people with disability.

The Award Winning StrydeTech mobility device helps people to get from a seated position independently, a feature absent from normal walking frames. The device's handles lower to the user¹s seated waist height and raise to provide helpful upward force while standing up.

Michael Loftus, Head of Faculty of Engineering & Science at CIT said, "CIT places a major emphasis on developing highly innovative engineers who are experts at developing products and systems that benefit society and industry. StrydeTech has excelled in this context and achieved global recognition for the outstanding quality of the team's work. They are a credit to CIT, Cork, and Ireland."

Cian O'Leary & Jonathan Mullane, are also team members of StrydeTech. They did not travel to Canberra. Muireann Hickey and Cian O'Leary are graduates of the BEng (Honours in Biomedical Engineering) and Kevin Hayes and Jonathan Mullane, are graduates of the BEng (Honours) in Mechanical Engineering.

CIT President, Dr Barry O'Connor congratulated the success of StrydeTech on this global stage, he said that it is "further evidence of the strong focus of CIT Engineering programmes on applying high level engineering design tools to enhance quality of life in this case for the many, many people who rely on assistive technology such as walking frames to maintain their independence. The global recognition of these CIT Engineering graduates will expedite the uptake of their innovative product design for the betterment of the lives of thousands of walking frame users".