Schoolchildren tap the potential of Stem and AI at Microsoft event
opened the doors of its
Dublin
campus to the scientists, engineers and big thinkers of the future for the organisation's third annual Dream Space Showcase.
The event saw more than 800 students from across the State come together to demonstrate how
STEM
(science, technology, engineering and maths) and
artificial intelligence
can tackle real-world challenges.
The three-day event showcased more than 110 innovative projects on everything from earthquake sensors and plant-health monitors to food-waste trackers and inclusive communication tools.
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Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
The future of pocket money? NestiFi lets families invest together for kids
Traditional banking has – eventually – adopted innovations such as digital-only accounts and smartphone payments. However, some elements of the financial infrastructure are still firmly stuck in the past, as anyone who has tried to gift money to a child in forms other than cash or vouchers will have discovered. Having run across this problem himself, Niall Dennehy began mulling over a possible solution. He applied his background in banking, telecoms and digital payments, and in June this year launched NestiFi, an AI -powered investment platform allowing parents, grandparents, relatives and friends to invest in a child's future as a group. To start the process, a designated adult downloads the free app and sets up an account for the child. This provides access to a personalised link they can share with family and friends who want to contribute to the child's nest egg. The person overseeing the account then chooses from a range of low-fee index funds and invests the money. Performance expectations are based on a 7.2 per cent average annual return, which Dennehy says is the approximate historical average (adjusted for inflation) of the S&P 500 over the past 30 years. NestiFi does not need a banking licence as it does not hold any client money. Investments are made through licensed/regulated intermediaries such as brokers, credit unions and brokerage-as-a-service providers. 'NestiFi rethinks investing through the lens of family and collaboration,' he says, adding that it is designed to support families in several different ways, whether that's to save for college fees, give gifts of digital assets or introduce children to the concept of financial literacy. [ Ireland 'actively hindering its citizens from building wealth and securing their future' Opens in new window ] 'The platform supports traditional investments such as stocks and ETFs as well as blockchain-powered assets like stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets,' Dennehy says. 'Our AI adviser 'Sebastian' provides personalised financial guidance for each user, and children can earn rewards by completing interactive lessons. For example, if they spend X number of hours learning on the app, they'll get a voucher for the same amount of time for Disney Plus.' NestiFi is not Dennehy's first innovation rodeo. A graduate of the University of Galway, where he studied IT, Dennehy has been involved with multiple start-ups as founder/co-founder, including digital payments infrastructure company, Aid:Tech, which was the overall winner of The Irish Times Innovation Awards in 2018. NestiFi is his latest venture, and the company currently employs four people. 'I've spent the last decade building technology at the intersection of trust, transparency and financial inclusion, and it struck me that families have no modern tools with which to build wealth together because most investment apps are built for individuals, not families,' Dennehy says. 'I felt the time had come to replace siloed banking apps and old-school custodial accounts with a next-gen platform that would bring together traditional investing, blockchain assets and family-based financial literacy in one seamless experience,' he adds. Dennehy says the company's initial target market will be the US, where an $84 trillion (€75.5 trillion) intergenerational wealth transfer is already under way. Europe will follow, including Ireland, where Dennehy says a substantial wealth transfer will also take place over the next 20 years. Families are a key market for NestiFi, but so are credit unions, financial advisers, financial institutions and fintechs interested in offering NestiFi as a value-added service to their clients. Investment in the business to date is running at about €250,000, and the company is currently raising a seed round of €1.5 million. A private beta launch is slated for the third quarter, with a full roll-out in the US to follow later this year. NestiFi's revenue will come from transaction fees and signing up channel partners. NestiFi is taking part in the AI Ecosystem Accelerator Programme run jointly by NovaUCD and CeADAR – Ireland's centre for AI – while completing regulatory compliance in the US and guiding a pilot group of families through a test run of the app. 'The Tam (total addressable market) is huge, and while we face competition, I think we can differentiate ourselves through the ease of our user interface and the fact that this side of the market is underserved by technology,' Dennehy says. The biggest challenge Dennehy has faced in setting up NestiFi has been navigating regulatory complexity while trying to move fast. 'We're building something that touches custody, tokenised assets and AI, all in a space where compliance really matters, especially when kids and families are involved. Trying to innovate responsibly without getting stuck in red tape has been the real balancing act,' he says. As a serial entrepreneur, Dennehy knows his way around the start-up ecosystem. However, he says that clearer guidance and faster turnaround times within the grants system would make a massive difference to how fast a company can develop. 'Often, the paperwork is intense, and the decision timelines are too slow. If there were more founder-first grant supports with less admin and more mentorship built in, I think we'd see even more global-scale companies emerge from Ireland,' he says. 'Too often, start-ups are forced to chase funding instead of focusing on customers and product. There is a lot of goodwill and some excellent people in the ecosystem, but I think there's still a gap between ambition and execution. [ Google, CeADAR to partner on deal to support AI in Irish business Opens in new window ] 'What I'd truly love to see would be a founder-led innovation hub, something agile with fast access to capital, technical expertise, and hands-on support for international expansion. We need to move away from treating grants as red-tape-heavy lifelines and instead use them as strategic fuel to help early-stage teams build, test and scale faster,' Dennehy says. Are you aware of a recent innovation or innovator we should feature in this column? Email us at innovation@
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Microsoft provides data storage for Israeli military
Microsoft is providing data centre storage to the Israeli military, but the company has denied any involvement in surveillance of the Palestinian population in Gaza or the West Bank . A report by the Guardian newspaper alleges that an Israeli military agency, Unit 8200, has developed a surveillance system that includes the collection and storage of audio from millions of telephone calls and other communications material. The Guardian says this enormous data trove feeds into the planning of Israeli military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, according to unidentified Unit 8200 sources quoted by the newspaper. A Microsoft spokesperson in Ireland said Microsoft's engagement with Unit 8200 was based on enhancing cybersecurity and protecting against potential cyber threats. READ MORE 'At no point during this engagement has Microsoft been aware of, or involved in, any surveillance of civilians using Microsoft's services, including through the external review we commissioned [earlier this year],' the spokesperson said. The spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the specific involvement of Irish data centres in the provision of storage facilities to Unit 8200. A customised and segregated area of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform is being used to store the material being collected, the Guardian report said. Leaked files from Microsoft suggest a 'large proportion' of the sensitive data is being stored by Microsoft in the Netherlands and in Ireland, it said. Guardian reporter Harry Davies told The Irish Times the most recent of the leaked files he reviewed showed just 1 per cent of the data was being held in Ireland as of last month. However, the amount of data involved is still enormous. The leaked files suggest 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data, equivalent to about 200 million hours of audio, were being held by Microsoft in July in the Netherlands and in Ireland, the report said. There was no response to a request for comment from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment . Microsoft and its LinkedIn subsidiary employ about 6,000 in the Republic of Ireland. A Microsoft source told the Guardian the company stipulated to the Israeli military that its systems could not be used for identifying 'targets' in Gaza. However, Israeli military sources told the Guardian the huge amount of data being stored was used to research and identify targets, including in Gaza. There have been numerous reports that the Israeli military is using digital tools, including surveillance and artificial intelligence (AI), to plan targeted attacks in Gaza. According to the Guardian, Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella , met the then head of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel, in Seattle in late 2021 to discuss the use of a segregated area of the Azure platform for the storage of Israeli military data. The valuable deal for Microsoft was negotiated after Israel decided it did not have the storage capacity or computing power on its military servers to house the Palestinian population's phone calls. Last September Mr Sariel announced his resignation from Unit 8200 about a year after Israeli military intelligence failed to detect the Hamas plan to attack Israel from Gaza on October 7th, 2023, the event that sparked the war.
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Femtech is about finally prioritising women's health in a world focused on men
Unless you were paying close attention, you might have missed a movement gaining momentum in the tech scene. It is not about artificial intelligence , large language models or a super intelligence that is apparently going to make our lives easier. We are talking about femtech – the development of innovative products and services designed to solve issues that primarily or disproportionately affect women. Technology for women used to mean something very different. This was highlighted for me a few years ago when a website that had pitched itself as a women's tech site for several years suddenly switched to being a generic technology publication, with a 'gadgets for girls' section tacked on. In addition to feeling more than a little patronising to its former readers, the gadgets in question were mainly 'sensual' massagers and sex toys. READ MORE Thankfully, that narrow view of what women want and need from technology has been edged out, to be replaced with more practical solutions. If reading about women's menstrual cycles , the menopause or breastfeeding makes you squeamish, you might want to avert your eyes now. Femtech is becoming a hot topic. From period trackers (that don't sell your data) and menopause products such as Peri's wearable vest to Coroflo's breastfeeding monitor and OnaWave's technology to help diagnose and treat pelvic conditions, the sector has seen a rise in the number of entrepreneurs interested in bringing innovation to women's health. We are becoming more open about health issues too. People talk about periods and menstrual cycles, rather than euphemistically referring to something that affects around half the population as 'women's troubles'. Companies seem to have finally realised that menopause (and perimenopause before it) is a real condition that affects almost half the workforce and is worthy of workplace support. And it could bring a whole new industry to Ireland. A new report from Health Innovation Hub Ireland and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College Cork has laid out just how beneficial the femtech movement could be to Ireland. The report, Femtech in Ireland, claims that Ireland could position itself as a leader in femtech, the global market for which is expected to reach $97 billion by 2030. You might ask why there is the need for femtech, rather than just investing in health tech and targeting a wider audience But there is more to it than that. Closing the women's health gap, the report says, could boost the global economy by $1 trillion each year by 2040. That is before you get to the new medical treatments and interventions it could unlock for the wider population, not just women. Innovation in women's health remains underfunded. But the people supporting the femtech movement in Ireland know how to hook their audience – appeal to the money-making side of things. While femtech means potentially better healthcare for women, which is to be applauded, there is also money to be made. There are few industries out there that have sprung up simply because they will make things better for the human race, with zero monetary reward for those who come up with the goods. There have been efforts to address this. In 2022, Health Innovation Hub Ireland set up a femtech hub with the goal of supporting start-ups and innovators. It has succeeded in supporting more than 30 companies over the past two years and created a network to support women's health innovation. You might ask why there is the need for femtech, rather than just investing in health tech and targeting a wider audience. A glance through the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez will make it clearer, laying out the many ways women have been forgotten about when it comes to designing products, services and guidelines that are supposed to protect them. Smartphones designed for a typical hand size come to mind. So too, car-safety tests carried out for years with the 'typical' male dummy. There is no shortage of protective equipment designed for male bodies, with women an afterthought. Even in the health sector, things have traditionally skewed to the male experience. Heart attacks present differently in women, but much of the literature that talks about 'typical' symptoms really means typical for men. Clinical trials were, for years, biased towards men, with results that could ultimately put women at risk because it led to treatments that had not been tested on female bodies. Big companies are recognising the potential here, regardless of their motivation for doing so In fact, as the femtech report highlights, women were not routinely included in clinical trials until the 1990s, when the US mandated that they must be. Why? Because of our pesky hormones, which fluctuated and could mess things up, or the risk to pregnancy. Woman are 51 per cent of the population. They make up 48 per cent of the labour force. It is in everyone's interests that technology geared towards dealing with women's issues are encouraged. And not just by paying lip service at best, or being downright patronising at worst, making something in pink or sparkly purple so it will appeal to women. We need real, effective research and technology born from it. Some companies have got the memo. Finnish company Oura has created a ring that measures everything from heart rate and blood oxygen to movement, interpreting the data into usable insights that can help you improve your health. It has developed an ovulation detection algorithm, a fertile window indicator for women and taken part in a research study that analyses biobehavioural changes during pregnancy. Similarly, Whoop, Garmin, Apple and Samsung all offer cycle tracking for people who use their wearables. Big companies are recognising the potential here, regardless of their motivation for doing so. It is now time for the Government and State agencies to put their money where their mouth is. As the report urges, invest in the 51 per cent. Women, and all of us, deserve better.
