Trinity students win Internet+ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

Posted on: 08 November 2018

Trinity students, Sinead McAleer and Paul Allan, struck gold at the world’s biggest startup and entrepreneurship competition.

Their company, BOP (Biological & Optical Prevention), secured top honours in the International Track of the “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, which was organised by the Ministry of Education, China, and hosted in Xiamen University.

Paul and Sinead, Computer Science and Business students, founded BOP along with David Ola, who is a Trinity Human Genetics student. Their product offers a colour-change solution to healthcare associated infections, highlighting which bugs are present in certain environments.

BOP was one of the teams that took part in Trinity’s student business accelerator programme (LaunchBox) this summer. You can read more about them at: https://www.bopmedical.com/

The competition in China had a staggering 2,600,000 participants and featured 640,000 projects (with “heat rounds” held in other universities throughout the country). There were representatives from 46 countries throughout the world and the International Track included 55 – 60 teams, hailing from all over the globe.

Head of Operations and Technology at BOP, Sinead McAleer, said:

We are delighted by our success and thrilled with the exposure that BOP and Trinity got when we were in China.

The competition placed a huge emphasis on science and innovation, with the majority of international teams being composed of PhD research teams. It was amazing to compete alongside these teams, and to place at the top of the leader board was an experience we will never forget.