Congratulations to Manuel Bruch and James Britton who were on the winning team “FoodErgy” at the GMIT International “Invent for the Planet” event in Galway on the 18th – 20th Februrary.  

“Invent for the Planet” is an international event where students from across the globe participate in a 48-hour Intensive Design Experience (IDE) to solve eleven global challenges. This year’s event involved students from 29 universities from 15 countries across five continents and GMIT was the first Irish third-level college to host the event which took place in multiple global locations simultaneously. The event was sponsored by a number of National Agencies, Government Departments, research centres of excellence and technology investment firms, including BiOrbic.

The students involved were all from diverse disciplines and institutions, and focused on solving three of the challenges: Small-scale Renewable Energy Resources; Disaster Resilience Food-Energy-Water infrastructure; and the Digitalization of Seafood Production. The latter was the most selected challenge with 21 of the 97 international teams choosing it.

Over the 48 hours, the students had to form a team, develop a solution, create a prototype, produce a 90-second video and a 10-minute presentation to pitch their idea to a judging panel. James and Manuel’s team “FoodErgy” proposed to use the exothermic heat of the accelerated composting process to contribute to home heating.

Speaking about their win, the team said: “’Our aim is to change the public mindset on food waste, utilising it for renewable energy through a new technology that can be shared globally in the fight against climate change.”

Well done again to Manuel and James! BiOrbic was delighted to be one of the bodies sponsoring this event and looking forward to the next one!