Heriot-Watt Computer Science Student Scoops Prize for Content Management System
This year’s winners of Best Third Year Group Project on the Computer Science course at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University impressed judges from leading IT services company Atos Origin with their sophisticated content management system. For the sixth consecutive year, Atos Origin have sponsored the class prize in an effort to promote learning in IT.
The annual competition took place last week at the university campus where ten teams took part to compete for first place and two runner up places. Best Project prize this year went to ‘Group 7’ comprising third year students Anthony Edwards, Julien Machon, Williams Reilly, John Truesdale, Alasdair Macleod and Marios Kokolakis.
The winning group developed a highly functional content management system for a car hire business in response to the competition brief, which was to simulate a real-life situation as closely as possible presenting a bespoke software solution to satisfy the needs of the customer.
The system developed by the winning team, named ‘Systems 360’, was required to record hire transactions, provide fleet management capability as well as providing an income recording system and statistical overview of service. The system also featured a built-in marketing and promotions plan to help generate publicity material, special promotions and to influence the company’s purchasing strategy.
Sitting on the panel this year were Atos Origin's Fredrik Nilsson, a graduate from the Information System Engineering course who joined Atos Origin straight from University in 2003 and Mark Davidson, Development Manager.
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.”
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