By Business & Finance 
Pictured (L-R) at NovaUCD are UCD students Joanna Kelly, Eppie Claffey and Sahar Mohamed-Ali, founders of Step Out
The six early stage student ventures selected for University College Dublin’s (UCD) 2016 Startup Stars programme have been announced today.
Developed by NovaUCD, the UCD Innovation Academy and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, this entrepreneurship programme provides a framework and support for UCD undergraduate and postgraduate students to work together to develop and grow start-up companies.
UCD Startup Stars began with cross-disciplinary workshops and course modules delivered earlier this year at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and the UCD Innovation Academy.
During this period students from across the University explored and evaluated a variety of real world problems before forming teams to develop start-up solutions to address the identified problems.
13 student teams pitched their start-up ideas to a panel of judges who selected six early stage ventures to proceed to the next phase of the programme.
These successful teams will now participate in an intensive four-week mentoring programme which starts later this month at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs.
Among those selected are Skillar, an app planning to redefine part-time employment in Ireland, and Step Out, which aims to bring activity-based workshops to secondary school students around Ireland to supplement the teaching of English literature curriculum.
Medwear, SME Affinity, The Little Things and Whooozin make up the remaining four teams selected.
