The Year 12 Computer Science student’s trip to the TechHub Incubator this week was a fascinating one for Michael Grigg, Hasan Mohammed, Adam Hope, Shuj Thairu, Dominic Hampstead and Sean Nicholas. TechHub is the global community for tech entrepreneurs and startups. The students enjoyed the experience which taught them some really important things about how to cope with failure, the work ethic and passion for technology.

The day started by meeting the Dean of the USC Business Faculty, James Ellis, of the USC Business Faculty and Dean Elizabeth Daley of the USC Cinematic Arts faculty who spoke to them about the importance of hard work and not being affected by failure. They then met three alumni of USC, Riley Testut (developed an app that has a 23 million person user base), Aimee Zhang, who designed and published (through kickstarter) a popular board game. They also had a lecture from Professor Hao Li who is the founder of ppinscreen and research lead at Industrial Light and Magic.

This was followed by an intensive 1hr 30 min to develop a Dragons Den style pitch to the USC people about the application of virtual reality in today's world. The students worked exceptionally well as a team, and were excellent in communicating and talking to the experts to get their feedback and advice. The Aldenham team beat schools like Merchant Taylors’ to be placed second out of five groups. The judges praised their presentation style as excellent, their research also excellent and they were able to explain a very challenging subject in a clear and easy to follow way.