Representatives from the IT services company Atos Origin visited the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (MACS) on 11 May to judge a competition for third year students.
The students, on the Computer Science and Information Systems programme, had been working on the project for a year. The groups gave presentations to a judging panel made up of staff from MACS and Atos Origin (one of whom, Fredrik Nilsson, Applications Developer, is a Heriot-Watt graduate).
The Best Group project was awarded to "Group 7" comprising Julian Machon, Alasdair Macleod, John Truesdale, Anthony Edwards, Marios Kokolakis and Williams Reilly. The students will be presented with a cash prize donated by Atos Origin.
Mark Davidson, Development Manager at Atos Origin said: "The standard this year of all of the teams was extremely impressive and we had a tough job choosing just one winner.
"Group 7 really impressed us with their content management system - they demonstrated real initiative, technical expertise as well as fantastic team spirit throughout. It was good to see the project teams utilising techniques and approaches that are very prevalent in the software development industry - something which will help ensure that these graduates will enter the industry well equipped from day one.
"The judging session was extremely interactive and we hope the students took away some useful feedback and advice from the panel."
Steve Langmead, Vice President - Scotland at Atos Origin, said: "Our support for higher education institutions such as Heriot-Watt forms part of our wider corporate social responsibility strategy, and commitment to education and learning in Scotland. We are pleased to be able to provide support of this nature to computer science students and hope that it gives them some real-life tangible experience that they can take forward into their own careers."
Lilia Georgieva, Third Year Supervisor for the Computer Science course at Heriot-Watt University said: "Atos Origin have been sponsoring our Third Year Group Project Prize for six years now. We very much appreciate the time and money that Atos Origin devotes to our students through sponsorship of this prize. We are delighted with the expertise and sensitivity that they bring to the judging panel - it leaves our students with an extremely favourable impression of Atos Origin as a potential future employer."