Microsoft Excellence Award for Queen's Student
Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 22th 2005 - Queen's University Computer Science graduate Ióseph O Loingsigh, from Four Winds in Belfast, is the first ever winner of a major national award.
Ióseph won the Microsoft Award for Student Excellence for developing, as his final year project, an innovative Internet phone service for partially sighted people who have difficulty reading text.
Developed in partnership with local IT company SpeechStorm (the speech division of Kainos Software), the technology is also aimed at people who are constantly on the move. The project enables people to keep up-to-date with the latest information by using any telephone to access and retrieve information from the Internet by talking and listening, rather than by text or visual images.
Ióseph will be presented with the award and an HP TC1100 Tablet PC at a ceremony on Queen's on Monday, at which the University will also receive a £1000 donation to support teaching, and a plaque for display in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Congratulating Ióseph, Microsoft Academic Group Manager, Microsoft UK, Kevin McDaniel said; "It was an excellent piece of work and had a number of interesting applications for disabled users. Ióseph's work with SpeechStorm on the project exhibited a high degree of professionalism and technical knowledge.
"Microsoft is very encouraged by the relationship Ióseph forged with SpeechStorm and looks forward to seeing more innovative projects developed using Microsoft technology in the near future."
Just this week, Ióseph took up a post as a software engineer with SpeechStorm, following an intensive interview process, as part of the company's £3.3 million expansion plans announced earlier this year.
Richard McCrossan, Ióseph's SpeechStorm team leader added, "We have been really impressed with Ióseph's determination, tenacity and attention to detail during his placement with us. His technical aptitude and ability to combine SpeechStorm and Microsoft technology to complete a challenging project was outstanding. We're delighted that Ióseph has recognised the opportunities available at SpeechStorm and look forward to him joining our award winning team," he said.
Ióseph said: "I was interested in doing an industrial project as part of my studies and my supervisor, Dr Peter Kilpatrick, drew my attention to this one. When it was completed and I had written it up for my dissertation, he suggested that I enter it for this competition, and I'm very glad that he did. I was shocked and delighted when I heard that I had won.
"It was a challenging and worthwhile assignment and I'm very grateful to Richard McCrossan at SpeechStorm, Dr Kilpatrick and my family for their advice and guidance."
Queen's Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Students and Learning Professor Ken Bell said: "The success of this project underlines the benefits to be gained from strong university-industry links, as exemplified by Queen's ongoing collaboration with SpeechStorm and their partner Kainos Software.
"Ióseph's combination of academic excellence, innovation and initiative make him an excellent role model for our students. We are grateful to Microsoft for sponsoring these awards and for their continuing support for Computer Science teaching at Queen's."
The project has two main elements. The first implements an information reading service that can be accessed by a caller dialling a number and making a verbal request for information. The second part, which comprises a comprehensive web-based reporting system, was developed to judge the viability and success of the overall system.
The project also won Ióseph the Microsoft Technology Prize for the best project developed on Microsoft Technology during 2004/05 as part of the Software Engineering Project Module taken by Computer Science students in their final year. The prize consists of a medal and a cheque for ?500.
The project was developed in ASP.NET using the Visual Studio development environment and provides a VoiceXML-based speech application and a Web-based administration and reporting tool.