On Wednesday, June 9th, the graduating classes of the B.Sc. in Computer Applications and B.Sc. in Applied Computational Linguistics gave open demonstrations of their final year projects to DCU staff and industry representatives. Dublin City University is well known for its strong relationship with industry, and this annual display provides an opportunity for the industrial and business communities to view the high standard and broad range of development work carried out by the graduating students of the School of Computing.

The wide variety of projects on display at the event was impressive, with educational technology, multimedia, mobile phone technology, and games technology the most popular application areas. Among the most interesting projects were an "Artificial Intelligence Wireless Virtual Pet", which can be run on mobile phones, an "Escape from DCU" computer game that requires players to eliminate DCU students and lecturers, and a version of the "Talking Clock" in Irish.

To view the full range of projects presented, download a copy of the Final Year Projects booklet.

The event commenced with a wine reception in the Helix, at which students, staff and representatives from companies such as Microsoft, Musgrave, Spectel, Irish Life Investment Managers and InControl had a chance to mix. Computer Applications graduate, Tadhg O'Shea, then presented the Fidelity Investments-sponsored "Most Outstanding Project" prize to Dermott Duffy. His project, "DXBoard - An XML-based Generic Boardgame Framework", is a flexible and powerful board game engine that allows games to be programmed using a custom XML-based programming language. Users can add new games, change existing ones or prototype new ideas.

The final year projects are completed in the application area of the students' choice, with ideas coming from various sources including INTRA work placement, other external companies, research interests of staff, and original ideas from the students themselves. Each individual or team brings the project from analysis and design, through the development process, and finally to testing and documentation. This takes a huge amount of time, work and dedication on the part of the students, and attendees were in agreement that the students' efforts were most certainly worthwhile.

If you, or your company, would like to be added to the invitation list for next year's event, please contact Laura Grehan at Tel: (01) 700 8608 or Email: laura.grehan@computing.dcu.ie