Huawei's 'TECH4HER’ Programme Offers Scholarships to UCC STEM Students

3 Dec 2021

Ten UCC students are set to benefit from Huawei Ireland's ‘TECH4HER’ Scholarship Programme which offers financial awards to eligible female students studying STEM subjects.

The successful students will be able to avail of financial awards as well as masterclasses and other opportunities to engage with outstanding female ambassadors, all offered by Huawei Ireland. 

Aimed at inspiring ambitious female STEM students who want to make a real contribution to Irish society, the application process involves candidates providing a personal statement on their passion for STEM, future career hopes, and barriers faced as a woman in this field, as well as an interview with an esteemed university panel. Top-performing students will then be awarded the scholarship, which will be provided for the current academic year.

This is the second year of the programme which offers scholarships to students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. UCC will join the initiative along with Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) and University College Dublin (UCD), who were part of last year’s successful inaugural campaign.

Speaking at the launch of the second year of the programme, Tony Yangxu, CEO Huawei Ireland, said:

“Huawei is committed to empowering women by giving them more opportunities to harness the immense potential of digital technology to transform society. After a successful first year, we are expanding the reach of the TECH4HER scholarship programme after great interest and uptake last year. Our mission is to support women who want to pursue a career in the exciting areas of ICT and STEM, with this initiative and our Seeds For The Future programme key in this respect. ICT is traditionally a male-dominated area. We hope that our efforts will help close the gender gap in STEM in Ireland and help attract more young women into the ICT industry to drive sustainable and inclusive growth across the country.”

University College Cork President, John O'Halloran added:

“We are very pleased to join this extremely worthwhile Huawei initiative. Programmes like this one are crucial to inspiring the next generation of STEM and technical graduates that our increasingly digitalised economy needs, and women must be fundamental to this as part of a diverse, creative, and inclusive workforce. The STEM area offers endless career opportunities, and our focus as a nation must be on shifting any stereotypical beliefs that young women are maybe not as good at subjects like maths or physics as men are. We need to harness the remarkable academic talent shown by female students annually across the country to encourage more to enter the tech sector and inspire the next generation of female STEM graduates that will help transform Ireland for the better.”

Prof Sarah Culloty, Head of College of Science, Engineering and Food Science (SEFS), University College Cork commented:

“We are delighted to be able to offer this opportunity to some of our very talented female STEM students, which will support them in achieving their full potential.  Time and time again I am amazed by their achievements and I am quite sure that our new partners will be too.”

The second year of the TECH4HER scholarship programme attempts to support change and to tackle the ongoing gender gap in STEM both in Ireland and aboard. Pfizer research in Ireland last year confirmed the gender gap between male (15%) and female (7%) participation in STEM professions, while Engineers Ireland has stated that female engineers represent just 12% of the engineering profession in this country.

About Huawei Ireland

Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. Huawei employs over 194,000 people in 170 countries across the globe.

Huawei has been in Ireland since 2004, with its business now serving over 3 million people and supporting over 860 direct and indirect jobs. Huawei’s business activities in Ireland continue to thrive. Intelligent connectivity with fibre and 5G technologies has begun and will empower the market of mobile networks and broadband networks with AI and IOT technologies. Huawei Ireland is working very closely with local operators and partners, and is focused on nurturing future talent and highly-skilled professionals in these areas across the country.

Huawei works with a number of Irish third-level institutions, including Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, University of Limerick, University College Dublin, and University College Cork, funding vital Irish research into video, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The company also partners key Science Foundation Ireland centres such as Connect, Insight, Adapt and Lero.

Huawei Ireland is supporting Ocean Research & Conservation Ireland, a “for-impact” non-profit organisation based in Cork, to conduct Ireland’s first real-time study to assess the impact of marine traffic on whales in Irish waters. The new study will see the deployment of acoustic monitoring equipment in the Celtic Sea at locations where sightings of whales and other wildlife have been recorded. The equipment will be able to listen for movements of whales, and with the help of machine learning models to enhance data analysis, for the first time provide near real-time detection.

For more on this story contact:

Patricia Finucane, Marketing and Communications Manager, College of Science, Engineering and Food Science, UCC. E: p.finucane@ucc.ie