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Limerick company launches scholarship to fight skills shortage

Emutex has launched a scholarship and internship for third level undergraduate students, after having to go abroad to hire seven out of 10 people in 2012.

AN IRISH ENGINEERING company has said that a skills shortage at home means it has to hire abroad.

Now Emutex, which is based in Limerick, has launched a scholarship programme to encourage more young people to study engineering and science subjects.

John Twomey, managing director of the Raheen-based company, said that during 2012 it had to look overseas to fill seven out of 10 job vacancies as there weren’t enough suitably qualified professionals in Ireland. “The skill level required is just not available here at present,” he said.

Celtic Tiger

“I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years,” said Twomey.

This trend has been building up since the Celtic Tiger years. There was a trend in the mid-noughties of less students taking on engineering and science subjects. We are feeling the affects of it now. Everyone got caught up in the building boom and the outflow of students from engineering and science courses declined significantly.

Emutex was founded nearly five years ago and currently employs 27 people. There is a diverse mix of staff, with half from Ireland and half from a range of other countries, in particular Spain. When hiring software engineers, Emutex found there simply weren’t enough fully qualified people in Ireland for the jobs.

“The growth of the business is at risk without the people,” said Twomey.

Scholarship programme

Because there has been a slight increase in the number of students entering third level, Emutex is now launching a scholarship programme aimed at students. “We want to encourage them. We know fees are going up in price, and we want to say look, for those of you who are really ambitious and enthusiastic, we have a simple, innovative engineering project for you,” he said.

The Emutex Software Innovator of the Year Scholarship scheme invites students to create an application using the popular Raspberry Pi embedded device.

This miniature computer can be used to create anything from a robot to a home automation system. All applicants will first submit their ideas on the Emutex website at www.emutex.com. From this, 10 finalists will be chosen, who will be given the device and any equipment they require to build a working prototype of their idea.

All of these ideas will be showcased on the Emutex website and explained in simple terms so that they can be easily understood by all ages. The student with the best project will win the Emutex Software Innovator Of The Year Scholarship for 2012/2013.

The winning undergraduate student’s third level fees will be paid by Emutex for one year, and they will also be offered a paid internship within the company.

Twomey sees the industry as having a big role in encouraging young people to become more adept at engineering and science.

We are going one step further,” he said. “We want to show them that we care. We are only a small company but we want to do our bit. We are [telling] other companies you need to do it too.

He described it as an “embarrassment” that there are hundreds of thousands of people unemployed in Ireland and jobs that are unable to be filled here.

The aim is to continue the scholarship every year, and he hopes other companies will follow suit.

Read: IT security company creates 100 jobs in Dublin>

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5 Comments
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    Mute Tallaght two
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    Feb 21st 2015, 7:32 AM

    I would not want to be in those towers with a fire on the floors below. Very frightening. How everyone got out ok.

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    Mute Tallaght two
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    Feb 21st 2015, 7:33 AM

    *hope

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    Mute Radu Covrig
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:12 AM

    The Torch tower caught fire. Unfortunate and ironic

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    Mute Sacha Mahady
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    Feb 21st 2015, 8:44 AM

    Wow. Another skyscraper fire that burned for hours and did not result in a pinpoint collapse. And still people accept what cr@p is spouted about what happened to tower 7 on that horrible day in sept 11. Great to hear no one was badly hurt in this fire.

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    Mute John Reese
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    Feb 21st 2015, 8:49 AM

    Did a 767 hit it though….duh no

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:06 AM

    With full tanks of thousands of tons of fuel.

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    Mute Horgay H
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:08 AM

    Re Sacha

    Well said

    Re John

    Tower 7, a separate building to the two twin towers, was a 47 storey skyscraper. It received minimal superficial damage from parts of the plane and none of this damage was structural. Apparently the ‘fire’ that raged in a small part of the building caused the whole structure to suddenly collapse in freefall within a clue of seconds. Scientists are still baffled as to how this happened. It was investigated and a model put forward as to how it happened but this data will not be released by the government despite lots of requests and no one else can recreate the findings of the investigators re this.

    Tower 7, is the elephant in the room. It cannot be explained and anyone who believes the official conspiracy theory them please explain Tower 7.

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    Mute Barry Cooper
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:50 AM

    Twin towers were engineered to take a hit from the plane but don’t let facts get in the way. Building 7 fell and no plane hit that. Any thoughts on y that one fell

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    Mute Alan b
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    Feb 21st 2015, 10:01 AM

    Ah boys ye are away with the fairies!

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    Mute Gary
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    Feb 21st 2015, 10:27 AM

    Paul, Scientific fact or Media coverage, you decide. The following information is easily found.
    Extremely high temperatures were evident before and after the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers. Office and hydrocarbon fires burning in open air (~500° to 1,500° F) cannot reach temperatures in the range that iron or structural steel melts (2,700° F).
    Thermal images from NASA found temperatures at ground zero to be as high as 2,800F.
    Iron oxide and aluminum are the ingredients of classic thermite, an incendiary that burns at approximately 4500°F, producing aluminum oxide and molten iron. The carbon content of the ground zero metal indicates the presence of thermite.
    Thermal images taken by NASA and EarthData satellites show that the “hot spots” remained at the same locations. The phenomenon did not “move” across the site, like one would expect from fire as it consumes the fuel available in any one location.
    University of California professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, the first structural engineer given access to the WTC steel notes, “I saw melting of girders at the World Trade Center.” Astaneh also “describes the connections [between supporting columns] as being smoothly warped: “That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot – perhaps around 2,000 degrees.’”.

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    Mute Andy Byrne
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    Feb 21st 2015, 11:36 AM

    Where was the plane that hit the pentagon? Or the field? Look at the pics!!

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    Mute James Whelan
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    Feb 21st 2015, 1:25 PM

    The difference between conspiracy theorists these days and those from the past is that today the so called ‘Tin foil hat ‘ merchants have all the scientific facts to back up their arguments.

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    Mute Sacha Mahady
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    Feb 21st 2015, 3:05 PM

    No John it did not. I would say it was hit with about the same amount of plane as tower 7 though. I’m not here to educate you. Do your own research before you talk nonsense.
    Separately the energy from the aviation fuel would have burnt out within a few minutes leaving only paper and desks to burn the rest. Computers and copiers don’t make great fire wood. Convenient that a un burnt passport which was apparently on the body of one of the terrorists was found at ground zero in near perfect condition too. The fact is that in every case possible. Everything falls at the line of least resistance. And the line of least resistance is not straight down through reinforced columns.

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    Mute Stephen Earle
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    Feb 21st 2015, 3:33 PM

    Sacha, they dont build towers with the same method of construction like the World Trade Center anymore so referring to it is ill informed

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    Mute Lloyd Hetherington
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:27 AM

    That’s what you get when you use slave labour!

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    Mute Neal Ireland Hello
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    Feb 21st 2015, 12:30 PM

    I doubt that the architects were slaves.

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    Mute Charlie Mountney
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:31 AM

    Well said Lloyd. Another ultra conservative Middle Eastern shitehole.

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    Mute Paul Cassidy
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:45 AM

    John…you implying a 767 hit tower 7? No plane hit tower 7.

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    Mute Micheal S. O' Ceilleachair
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    Feb 21st 2015, 11:40 AM

    Remember the Towering Inferno. Good film.

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    Mute Vaibhav Borse
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    Feb 21st 2015, 9:17 AM

    i didn’t know Dubai had a torch!!

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    Mute space invader
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    Feb 21st 2015, 5:47 PM

    A few less windows for the window cleaners to clean Monday morning

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