The Atos IT Challenge: Harnessing student innovation for 12 years
Over the past 12 years, Atos has continued to advance student innovation through the Atos IT Challenge. An international contest dedicated to challenging not only students' innovative qualities but also their developmental and business skills, it offers a truly unique learning experience while adding value to our business.
Read on to discover what the IT Challenge is, why student innovation is so valuable, and how we support student participants throughout the contest and beyond.
What is the IT Challenge?
The Atos IT Challenge is the first international contest dedicated to student innovation. We provide engineering and technical students across the globe the opportunity to work on real-life challenges that today’s organizations face. They bring fresh perspectives and new ideas to tackle important topics. We bring the Atos Expert Community, Scientific Community and subject matter experts to support students as they learn to transform their ideas into functioning business solutions by creating working applications.
Year after year, we see the geographical diversity of the team registrations grow with around 20 countries and 80+ different universities. That in itself generates pioneering capabilities for all parties involved. Every edition of the challenge embraces a compelling new theme, aligned with the latest technological innovations as well as topics relevant to society. This is where the competition makes a difference for society as a whole. The current 12th edition of the challenge spotlights the technical revolution that is the Metaverse. We are challenging the student teams to produce an application that demonstrates a practical Metaverse use case by exploring new modes of working and that will deliver business value.
Not only does this contest provide students with growth opportunities, making a difference and bringing their ideas to market, it also boasts an amazing reward program. The three finalist teams receive €10,000, €5,000 and €3,000 respectively for their participation and efforts in the challenge.
Why is student innovation valuable to our business?
If you take a look at digital organizations that really stand out from the crowd as distinct leaders, there is one common factor; they all embrace innovation and continuous change. Atos is no exception — it is part of our DNA as an organisation. As a leading innovator, we disrupt, we reinvent and we challenge the status quo. But how do we maintain that competitive edge and continue to grow when it comes to innovation?
As a leading innovator, we disrupt, we reinvent, and we challenge the status quo. But how do we maintain that competitive edge and continue to grow when it comes to innovation? Short answer: the Atos IT Challenge.
How do we support students during and beyond the IT challenge?
The contest is managed by the Atos Campus Management team, offering an abundance of opportunities and rewards to the students not only during the contest, but also in the future. This is in addition to the support they receive during the challenge by our Scientific Community, other experts and Atos employees. Students are assigned dedicated coaches to assist in bringing ideas into real-life concepts, to provide guidance on their approach, technologies to consider and how to present themselves and their applications. We also help convert these student applications into commercial products by collaborating with our experts to take the applications to market with our clients.
We work with the students well beyond the contest, and all student submissions that are selected to participate are offered a fast-tracked working opportunity to join Atos. Depending on the stage of their academic journey, we welcome the students as interns or through one of our many graduate recruitment programs. The true dedication and innovation possessed by participants is what Atos needs to enhance our workforce and successfully deliver as a business.
There are so many opportunities for development, growth, and career advancement to the students who participate in the Atos IT Challenge. If you are ready to transform business, society and the planet through technology, join today!
By Victoria Dennett, Group Campus Management and Innovation Programs Specialist
Posted on: December 8, 2022
By Mandy Metten, Head of Group Campus Management
