GEMS Innovation Awards 2019 recognise young geniuses, inventors and entrepreneurs

Over 200 students from across the GEMS Education network of schools were recognised at the GEMS Innovation Awards held at GEMS Dubai American Academy on 1 May. Awards were handed out to top performers in four separate challenges Global Innovation Challenge, GEMS Xcelerator Programme, GEMS ENBD Future of Digital Finance Challenge, and GEMS Innovative School of the Year.

The 2018-19 Global Innovation Challenge, in partnership with Silicon Valley-based Singularity University, was launched in October last year and has seen tens of thousands of GEMS Education students apply their skills and knowledge to produce high-impact solutions to a range of global problems and challenges. The most innovative projects were shortlisted and, over the last two months, some 100 students across 35 teams have benefitted from mentorship from industry professionals, seed funding and entrepreneurship workshops. Teams then pitched their ideas to a panel of judges from VISA, Emirates Airline, Microsoft, INJAZ UAE, DTEC and other organisations during a special Demo Days event held on 28 and 29 April at GEMS World Academy Dubai, after which the eventual winners were selected.

Dino Varkey, Chief Executive Officer, GEMS Education, said: The GEMS Innovation Awards were launched specifically with the aim of developing and recognising a culture of innovation among our students. We want to encourage and enable them to build on compelling ideas that can transform our world by addressing and finding solutions to some of humanitys most pressing challenges, while also helping them to take their products and inventions to the next stage of development and eventually to market. This underlines our commitment to the UAE leaderships vision to nurture innovation skills among our young generation, and we are incredibly proud of the enterprise and genius shown by our talented students.