Digital Catapult Northern Ireland was launched at Titanic Belfast today, with business leaders and digital innovators from across Northern Ireland, and from elsewhere in the UK and Ireland, coming together to learn about the Catapult’s ambitious programme of projects and initiatives designed to support the growth of Northern Ireland’s digital cluster.
Speaking at the launch, Tom Gray, CTO of Kainos and Head Digital Catapult NI, said: “This ambitious inaugural work programme will help accelerate the growth of our areas of strength such as analytics and cybersecurity and increase our opportunities in emerging areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies.”
Also speaking at the launch event, Northern Ireland’s Economy Minister, Simon Hamilton, added: “The Northern Ireland Digital Catapult provides a tremendous opportunity to increase the growth of our digital sector and act as a catalyst to drive productivity and competitiveness across all sectors of our economy.
“I particularly welcome the role which the Digital Catapult is playing in strengthening the connections between Northern Ireland’s digital cluster and others across the UK and beyond.”
During the next 12 months, Digital Catapult NI will deliver a wide range of activities that will support and help build on Northern Ireland’s digital capability and promote international collaboration. This will include showcasing outstanding digital companies to industry; pit stops where large non-digital companies can engage with digital startups; meetups where companies interested in particular topics can explore and collaborate on challenges; and international outreach.
During his opening address Tom Gray also indicated that Digital Catapult Northern Ireland will organise at least one hackathon every quarter, bringing developers and hackers together to create commercially-viable prototypes.