.DCU student John Mallon, winner of the IBM/DCU student project of the year competition 2001, will travel to IBM's European Research Laboratory in Zurich for a three-day incentive workshop this September. He will join 50 of the best engineering and computer science students from all over Europe and the Middle East who are embarking on postgraduate research in the area of IT.

Undergraduate students of computing, engineering and science were eligible to apply for the award, which was organised jointly by IBM and DCU. The Research Advisory Panel at DCU, which comprises senior academics at the university, made the final recommendation.

John Mallon will graduate from DCU this autumn with a BEng (1st class honours) in mechatronic engineering, which is run jointly by the schools of electronic engineering and mechanical and manufacturing engineering. Mechatronics is a relatively newly coined word which refers to the art and science of combining precision mechanical engineering, electronic control and computers in order to make intelligent machine systems.

For the competition, John not only submitted a written project "Mobius, an integrated design towards the implementation of an autonomous mobile robot", but he also created a custom mobile robotic platform. The long-term aim of his research programme is to automatically navigate this platform based on information supplied to it via onboard cameras. Professor Paul Whelan, Director of the Vision System Laboratory, the research centre based in DCU in which this work took place, said that John's project was an outstanding piece of research. "For an undergraduate to specialise in mechanical and electronic engineering as well as understanding key issues in robotic vision is a remarkable achievement", he commented.

James Flynn of IBM is equally impressed with John's research. He said, "IBM in Ireland is happy to be involved in this European-wide effort by IBM to encourage gifted students such as John to invest time and effort in pursuing postgraduate studies in science and technology".

John will be registering in the autumn for a PhD in the School of Electronic Engineering at DCU.

Ends.

For further details:

Eilis O'Brien:700 5217 or 087 2057125 Eileen Colgan:700 5656