February 10th 2015

Excellent ideas and exciting results for MCI teams in the 2014 CAST Award

MCI graduates and their innovative ideas won the third, fourth and sixth prizes plus the Best Video award.

Towards the end of 2014, the Tyrol’s students and graduates were again invited to submit attractive business ideas for the CAST Award. The ten best entries shortlisted for the finals included three submitted by teams from the MCI. Another new feature in 2014 was the requirement to accompany the business idea with a video clip, and an MCI team won the special video prize.

Third place in the 2014 CAST Award went to Frederick Wirth, a student in the MCI’s Master’s program in Mechatronics - Mechanical Engineering, and his brother Sebastian from Munich Technical University. The two brothers are developing a laser protection cabin using an innovative material. The cabin provides a higher level of safety for laser machining centers and also helps reduce costs. The jury was impressed and provided useful feedback for the further development and marketing of the idea.

Students and graduates of various disciplines at the Entrepreneurial School® joined forces to establish Team2020, which took the fourth and sixth prizes in the 2014 CAST Award and also the Best Video award. They won fourth prize with their SelfieHelfie project. This is an innovation in the field of promotional gifts that is right up to date: The SelfieHelfie is targeted at young people as a replacement for old-fashioned freebies like ballpoint pens and lighters. Team2020 also came sixth with its UPski project, which is designed to make the back-country skiing experience available to older and less fit skiers.
The successful interdisciplinary Team 2020, which describes itself as a “think tank”, has the following members: Daniel Ganzer (Strategic Management & Tourism), Markus Huemer (Environmental, Process & Energy Engineering), Lucas Konstantinoff (Environmental, Process & Energy Engineering), Roman Leithner (Environmental, Process & Control Engineering; Sport Science; Industrial Engineering & Management), Benjamin Massow (Mechatronics), Thomas Senfter, (Industrial Engineering & Management) and Gerald Streng (Mechatronics).

Florian Becke, CAST’s Executive Director, was impressed by the high proportion of outstanding and exploitable ideas submitted for the 2014 CAST Award. “With such a wealth of excellent ideas with such potential, the further development of the Tyrol as a business location is assured,” he concluded.

The MCI would like to congratulate the winning MCI teams and all the other successful entrants in the 2014 CAST Award, especially Peter Schwendinger (1st place, MUI) and Peter Winkler (2nd place, LFU). We wish them every success for the future!



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