Undergraduate recognised for educational work in Africa with IT award

24 October 2008

A young Scotsman’s vision for improving educational opportunities for children in Southern Africa has scooped him a top award.

Martin Conaghan, a former student of St Andrew’s University, Scotland, has been named winner of the IT category of the 2008 Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Student of the Year Awards. The award is sponsored by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

The SET Awards are Britain's most important awards for science and technology undergraduates and Martin was rewarded for his vision for improving educational opportunities for children in Southern Africa. His work led him to developing and delivering educational software based around games creation for use on the OLPC (one laptop per child) programme.

Simon Maddison, Fellow of the IET and technical director of the TTXGP, presented Martin with his award. He said, “What makes Martin’s work especially worthy is that he worked as a volunteer with children in Africa over the last four summers and after graduation, returned to Africa to continue his voluntary work.

“Martin’s vision for improving the educational opportunities for children in Africa is therefore grounded in his experience and his motivation and commitment are reflected in the high quality of his scientific work in the area of computing.

“The scientific and technical challenges that Martin had to address in developing GCTC (Games Creation Tool for Children) were huge. These were all successfully researched and dealt with through a systematic software engineering approach that included extensive user testing and iteration.

“Extremely articulate, the judges were impressed by Martin’s passion for the use of technology in addressing the educational needs of children in the poorer countries. Martin epitomises the very best of technical excellence and so we were delighted that he was rewarded with the IT category of the awards.”

The winners were announced at a prestigious ceremony in London's Royal Lancaster Hotel attended by more than 500 students, academics and business leaders.

The SET awards provide a showcase for educational excellence by publicly recognising the exceptional achievements of both students and universities. They are presented at a spectacular ceremony bringing together hundreds of technology students and academics, as well as senior figures from industry, government, science and the media.

As well as sponsoring the IT category, the IET also helped judge nominations in this category and the electronic engineering category.

Media enquiries to:

Robert Beahan
IET Press Officer
T: +44 (0)1438 767336
M: +44 (0)7595 400912
E: rbeahan@theiet.org

Mary Donovan
IET Head of Communications
T: +44 (0)1438 765587
M: +44 (0)7725 498117
E: mdonovan@theiet.org