Thursday 3rd October 2024
When he was at school, Jack Doyle was very good at woodwork and design and communications graphics (DCG) and people were telling him he should study engineering. It seemed to make sense to him and he took the advice, accepting an offer for the TU Dublin engineering degree programme. But during first year, Jack knew that it wasn’t the right fit.
“I realised I was a bit more design-oriented and I don’t think I realised how much science was involved in engineering,” said Jack, of Ballysax, Co Kildare, and a former pupil of Newbridge College.
He decided to make the move to the TU Dublin Product Design course, starting again in first year the following autumn.
“When I was filling in the CAO form, I didn’t even know it was a course. I was so tunnel-visioned about engineering, I only learned about it when I was in Bolton Street,” he said.
It turned to be absolutely the right move for Jack, whose final-year project, Íon, has already marked him out as a promising entrepreneur.
He knew there was an issue about water quality in homes using well water and he came up with the idea for an innovative domestic water-testing kit for homes that are not connected to public schemes.
There are more than 800,000 people in Ireland currently using private wells for water – an area that remains unregulated.
Jack’s product aims to provide homeowners with an easy and inexpensive means to test the quality of their drinking water. The idea has taken off and, as Jack was completing his degree studies this year, his project was gaining traction
Jack, who was joined on the project by fellow student, Dean Byrne, who works with him as co-founder, was bolstered by success in student entrepreneur competitions and “I started to believe there was an idea there”.
Jack and his supervisor Colm O’Kane approached the TU Dublin Innovation Office seeking support to spin out his invention, now called Puritee.
Earlier in the summer, he participated in the college’s ivenTUre Student Entrepreneur Accelerator Programme.
Source: Independent