Door Mark McIntyre 

120 teams entered, and more than 350 students took part. But tonight the winning teams from among the 20 finalists of the 2018 TU/e Contest were announced, with aWeare, Ratio, and Team T.E.S.T. taking home the top prizes in each of their categories.

The two audience prizes went to Maps Untold – a new web platform for connecting tourists to local travel recommendations – and iGem – a student team bringing a novel multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of diseases. Additionally, the winner of this year’s ASML Makers Award was Tipo – for their functioning prototype braille keypad for smartphones.

Bert-Jan Woertman, Commercial Director of TU/e and chairman of the prize’s grand jury, spoke of the difficulty in selecting the prize winners from amongst the final 20, commenting that the common theme amongst this year’s finalists was of ideas which may contribute significant social benefits in the future.

Winners in the category of Best Idea – and so earning a €4,000 cash prize and year long workplace at the TU/e Innovation Space – were aWeare, a concept for an assistive-technology product catering for the visually impaired.

Ratio were winners of the Best Prototype award, for their innovative computer software which can automatically coordinate the vast array of design work needed for large scale engineering projects, and so massively eliminating waste time and costs for industry. They also earned a large cash prize and a place at the TU/e Innovation Space.

The Best Student Team prize went to Team T.E.S.T., who narrowly missed out on the award last year. Their project is based around the development of small portable medical biosensors, capable of doing the same job that large hospital monitoring machines do currently, but in the comfort of a patient’s own home.