Uni students ready for pan-European Morpheus Cup contest

Teams of the brightest university students from across Europe will gather on 28 April to compete for prizes of up to 50,000 at this year’s Morpheus Cup contest in Belval, Luxembourg.

The students from 49 European universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, will present solutions to a panel of judges and potential investors on topics including the circular economy, data analytics and nanotechnology.

Last year’s Morpheus Cup winner was a team from the Hautes Etudes Commerciales business school in Paris. The students created a connected device that monitored the health of lung transplant patients and sent the data to a doctor. The competition was set up three years ago in a bid to help companies plug the growing skills gap they are experiencing in many sectors. The organisers said that the contest has fostered 600 projects and start-ups. 

A Morpheus Cup spokeswoman said the day-long event is a much better solution to allow students and companies to meet than job fairs. “This way the most talented students from across Europe can show potential employers the kinds of projects they want to create that help society and present solutions to problems companies are facing too.”

There are six generic prizes to be won, in technology, business, finance, marketing, science and life. 

Special prizes are sponsored by companies and organisations, this year including the Cern particle physics laboratory and Vodafone. Students are asked to come up with solutions to problems in areas such as green data centre design and logistics, new materials, and the Internet of Things. For example, cargo company Cargolux has asked students to come up with a strategic road map for an all-cargo airline to be developed in the next 10-20 years.