Pictured: The ME310 Design Loft
Four post-grad students from Trinity College Dublin have been selected by software giant SAP to participate in this year’s session of Stanford’s prestigious ME310 course, considered the gold standard course in industrial design.
They will join an elite international group of students for this year’s programme at Stanford.
The four TCD post-grads will work with four Stanford engineering students on a design innovation challenge defined by SAP.
The focus will be on SAP’s AppHaus innovation space and how remote collaboration between teams can be achieved using the latest in technology and design thinking.
The AppHaus concept – which was deployed in Dublin this year by SAP – is itself inspired by Stanford’s influential d.school.
SAP opened its first large scale implementation in Dublin in early 2012, and are now converting a number of buildings on their Mountain View campus. The Dublin and Silicon Valley teams collaborate closely, and the students will look at how to shrink the physical distance between the locations.
“We only sponsor one university globally in any given year, and it is a great affirmation of TCD’s international reputation that we have selected them,” Dr Tony O’Donnell from SAP Ireland said.
“It is also a big endorsement for the innovation and creativity that we experience every day in the AppHaus, and we look forward to seeing how the students can make us collaborate better across distances.”
The ME310 course places students in a ‘real world’ design dialogue with a corporate partner and by the end of the course, they deliver a bespoke innovative solution or process for that company.
The course focuses on the team design process and, using advanced tools and methods, promotes superior design and manufacturing of products.
“Trinity’s Engineers and Computer Scientists are as good as the best in the world,” said Prof. Gareth Bennett who is heading up the ME310 teaching team with Profs. Margaret O’Mahony, Kevin Kelly and Mike Brady, and teaching assistant Donal Holland.
“An invitation to collaborate directly with Stanford’s School of Engineering and to be part of its Global Network of Elite Universities is testament to this fact. Breakthrough Design Innovation creates jobs and strengthens economies.
“Trinity’s leading reputation in design excellence delivers graduates who can both pioneer new companies to create indigenous employment and help reinvent existing companies to make them more competitive,” Prof Bennet said.
