Huawei scholarship awards 50 Irish students for STEM talent

Seeds for the Future awarded €5,000 to the top 50 students on an eight-day Huawei programme.

50 talented third-level students from across Ireland have been awarded €250,000 in scholarships from Huawei.

The Huawei Seeds for the Future programme saw 100 Irish students selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants to take part in an eight-day course in late October.

Covering a range of STEM-related areas including smart cities, artificial intelligence, 5G and machine learning, the annual programme offered students an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the latest in science and technology as well as learn about Chinese culture.

Huawei, which is a global technology company headquartered in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, has been running the flagship Seeds for the Future programme since 2017. More than 170 Irish university students have benefitted from this scholarship over the years.

“The awardees come from a diverse range of courses, but all of them have a particular interest in STEM – and all of them were outstanding,” Luke McDonnell, a senior communications manager at Huawei Ireland, told SiliconRepublic.com.

The top 50 students, who were recognised at an event last week at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin, will receive €5,000 each as part of the scholarship award.

In the same week, Huawei launched its Tech4Her programme for a third year, offering 20 scholarships to women studying STEM across three Irish universities.

The programme, which aims to inspire young women in STEM and move the needle in terms of the number of women joining the tech industry, has already handed out 26 scholarships in the previous academic year.

“The [Seeds for the Future] programme was quite well-structured in the sense that we were put into groups, and we had a series of talks on various different aspects of technology,” said Heather Murphy of Trinity College Dublin, one of the scholarship winners.

“But we also have a lot of liberties and a lot of freedom to move in whatever direction we want,” she added about the online courses and problem-solving workshops.

“What I was hoping to achieve out of the programme was to come up with more of an ICT-based knowledge and understanding of how computers work, as well as AI and 5G,” added scholarship awardee Carlos Okpe.

“And of course, there was a stipend that came with it as well, which motivated me to apply for the scholarship. I knew it was going to be a great experience overall so I’m glad I applied.”

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