Sheffield Hallam students win new researchers award
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Ideas4Innovation aims to harness British expertise in innovation to help British athletes succeed
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Jessica Whitehorn 17 September 2009
Two students from courses related to computer simulation at Sheffield Hallam University, Varun Kadle (MA in Animation for Computer Games) and Mangala Kodagoda (MSc in Games Development Software), have won UK Sport’s 2009 Ideas4innovation: New Researchers Award.
The aim of UK Sport's Ideas4Innovation programme is to develop an award scheme to acknowledge and harness outstanding research and innovation concepts for elite sport, generated by the UK's research community, to support the mission to London 2012 and beyond. There are two competitions: the New Researchers Award - aimed at final year and first year post graduate students - and the Garage Innovators Award - open to any sports enthusiast with creative ideas that may have the potential to enhance the performance of British Olympic or Paralympic athletes.
In its second year, the New Researchers Award was endorsed by 48 UK universities, 13 of whom submitted 18 projects in total to UK Sport, approved by each university’s New Researchers Coordinator. Final year undergraduate or masters-level students were encouraged to enter their projects if they had the potential for enhancing elite sports performance. Students from the disciplines of engineering, science, medicine or the arts were encouraged to apply.
Eight finalists were chosen to present their projects to an expert panel at UK Sport’s Head Office in London last month. The judges who decided on the winning idea, were UK Sport’s Head of Research and Innovation, Dr Scott Drawer, Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medallist Jason Queally, and UK Sport’s Ideas4Innovation Project Manager Alison Macpherson.
The successful project was based on the development of a novel tool to assist athletes in their preparation for performing at, and insight of, competition venues, providing a means for the athletes to familiarise themselves with their competition arena and all visual cues to assist strategy prior to any competitive race.
New Researchers Award winner Varun Kadle said: “It is truly an honour to be recognised by Britain's elite sports governing organisation. This is the perfect reward for the team's hard work. I am very glad that the work and dedication of each team member has paid off so well.
"I hope that this project will eventually act as a very valuable tool which can help the athletes achieve laurels. Receiving this grant has opened up new avenues and given the team enough support to make this a world class product."
Mangala Kodagoda added: "I am extremely happy that our work is being recognised and supported by UK Sport. This is a really good opportunity for us as university students to actually create something useful for athletes, and hopefully make their lives a little bit easier. The team is very excited about this and we're looking forward to doing our best to make this project a success."
Professor Steve Haake, Head of Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam, said: "The students were very quick to pick up on the needs of sport. They worked fantastically as a team, with two programmers and two animators producing a really polished piece of software. It obviously worked because not only did they get to the final but they won!"
UK Sport will now invest £25,000 in the further development of the winning idea, allowing Mangala and Varun to continue their studies.
Ideas4Innovation Project Manager Alison Macpherson commented: “We’re delighted to have a winning idea of the New Researchers Award where the area of expertise lies outside the world of sport – that is what this competition is all about. I’m very excited to see this project evolve and how it could impact on athletes’ preparation and performances in 2012.”
Applications for the 2010 Ideas4Innovation: New Researchers and Garage Innovators Awards will open in November this year. For more information on the New Researchers Award for students or the Garage Innovators Award, please contact Alison.Macpherson@uksport.gov.uk
Please note: despite a high standard of applications for this year’s Garage Innovators Award, none of the projects selected to present to the judges were deemed able to make a significant impact on the performances of British athletes in 2012 and therefore the £25,000 research grant has not been awarded.
