Celebrating the 2023 winners of the AJ Bell Technology Award

Last month, three students from Levels 4, 5 and 6 attended an awards ceremony where they received the AJ Bell Technology Award for 2022 – 2023. The award recognises the top performing students in Levels 4, 5 and 6 from the Computer Science and Software Engineering programmes.

The winners of the awards were:

· Level 4, Louis Optimism, Software Engineering

· Level 5, Reece Woodcock, Computer Science

· Level 6, Samir Zafar, Computer Science

The winners received a tour around the AJ Bell offices to gain an insight of the working world, as well as a chance to speak with the team in depth. Louis Optimism, Level 4 winner, said: “The event was insightful and provided information on various career paths and opportunities available in the real-world workplace.”

Mo Tagari, Chief Technology Officer of AJ Bell, and Paula Wharrier, Recruitment Manager, also at AJ Bell, came to the state-of the-art SEE Building to celebrate our winners. Mo said, “We are proud of our ongoing collaboration with The University of Salford where we annually recognize and reward the brightest minds. The AJ Bell Technology award not only fosters academic excellence but also emphasises our commitment to supporting and nurturing budding talent within our community.

“Technology is the heart of our business and it’s great to be supporting such talented students to develop themselves and become future technology leaders, whilst at the same time supporting the growth of STEM excellence within Greater Manchester. As we continue to recognize the growing importance of data analytics and AI in today's digital age, we are thrilled to announce that, starting next year, we will be increasing the prize to fund 4 prizes per academic year including Masters students.”

The Masters students will have the opportunity to win this new award on the Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering postgraduate courses.