ATU Sligo Student Built AI App for Under €800, Won AIB National Award

ATU Sligo student Emanuel Covasa has won AIB’s Small Budget Project of the Year award at Croke Park for NeuroBridgeEDU, a desktop AI app he built end-to-end for under €800 in tooling. The app records lectures in real time, transcribes them locally on the user’s own device, and rewrites the output as bullet points, native-language notes, or accessible formatting for dyslexic and ADHD readers. The AIB category, in its own description, honours projects that “achieve significant impact through resourcefulness and efficiency”, an explicit vote for low-budget builds over scale.

The award lands in a year when enterprise AI capex dominates the headlines. Covasa framed the win as a vote for better placement over bigger budgets.

The Award and the Bet It Validated

Emanuel Covasa, a student of Computer Networks and Cyber Security at ATU Sligo, received the AIB Small Budget Project of the Year Award at the 2026 AIB Student Impact Awards, brought to you by AMLÉ. The ceremony took place at Croke Park in Dublin on 28 April 2026, and the prize attached to the category is €500. AMLÉ, the awards’ organiser, runs as Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn, the Union of Students in Ireland. The total prize fund across the awards’ 27 categories reached €15,500 this year, an expansion from the previous edition, per the announcement of the AIB Student Impact Award winners.

The win lands on a private bet Covasa has been running since mid-2024. Covasa, in remarks shared with the original report on the under-€800 build, said: “NeuroBridgeEDU started from a personal frustration, as a dyslexic and AuDHD founder, no productivity tool worked the way my brain actually works. So I built one.” AIB Chief Marketing Officer Elaine Purcell, speaking at the awards, said the programme is “a vital platform that underscores AIB’s commitment to empowering young people with the real-world skills they need to thrive.”

The institution’s framing of the category matches Covasa’s pitch for the product. A university lecturer or an HR team transcribes a session once on their own device, privately and locally, then a larger model running on hardware the company provides on-premises shapes the output for each recipient. Bullet points go to dyslexic users, native language to multilingual ones, accessible formatting to ADHD readers, and role-shaped summaries for different teams. Nothing leaves the institution. The whole stack cost Covasa less than under €800 in tooling.

From a Python Script to a Desktop App

NeuroBridgeEDU began in mid-2024 as a private tool. The first version was a small Python script that turned a recording into a structured set of notes, written for one student trying to make his own lectures readable. The founder’s diagnoses, dyslexia and ADHD, were the lens that made the gap visible in the first place, not obstacles to the work.

The script kept being reached for, week after week. That single-user prototype became a question: if this helps one student keep up with a lecture they would otherwise lose, what would happen if every student in that lecture had access to the same thing? The answer became NeuroBridgeEDU, run entirely on the user’s device, never sending audio to a public cloud. In Q1 2025 NeuroBridgeEDU picked up first place at the EU Green Innovation Days, cited for AI tools that adapt educational content to diverse cognitive needs.

A first web version shipped in Q3 2025, with real-time lecture transcription and AI summarisation accessible from any browser.

The Q1 2026 build shipped as a native desktop app, on Tauri and Rust with a Next.js front end. Transcription runs on Whisper.cpp; the larger model is EU-built, drawing on Mistral and EuroLLM; the app ships with 32 EU languages and full on-device privacy. Co-founder Luc Dober, a Belgian-Irish educational technology specialist with a decade of private-tutoring experience, joined to keep the product honest against the question: would this actually help a student in week eight of a hard module? The founders added an Irish Enterprise Awards double in March 2026, taking Best Accessible Education Technology and an Ethical AI Excellence Award, with the AIB win following a month later in April.

Milestones, in the product’s own words

• Q2 2024: First Python script, the seed of NeuroBridgeEDU
• Q1 2025: First place at EU Green Innovation Days
• Q3 2025: Web app v1 launched in any browser
• Q1 2026: Desktop app v2 (Tauri/Rust + EU AI), Irish Enterprise Awards double, ATU regional award
• April 2026: AIB Small Budget Project of the Year at Croke Park

How NeuroBridgeEdu Works

NeuroBridgeEDU is a desktop app, per the product’s own About page, that records lectures in real time, transcribes them locally, and generates personalised study summaries. The default product is free for individuals, open source, and runs entirely on the user’s device. Setup is under three minutes, per the project’s own description. Everything below the user happens on the same laptop, with no recording ever leaving the room.

The architecture splits the work into two layers. A small local model handles transcription and on-device processing of the user’s own material, while a larger model running on hardware the company provides on-premises at the institution shapes the output for each recipient. The local layer keeps personal notes personal; the on-premises layer keeps institutional content institutional. Universities, the product’s own description suggests, can adopt NeuroBridgeEDU without routing lecture audio through a public cloud. The promise is the line Covasa repeats in product copy: nothing leaves the institution.

Output formats the product generates

• Bullet points for dyslexic users
• Native language for multilingual readers
• Accessible formatting for ADHD readers
• Role-shaped summaries for HR, training, or other teams

The Four Principles Behind Every Feature

Four principles govern every product decision at NeuroBridgeEDU. The team describes them as questions the product is run through, not taglines. They are accessibility first, empathy-driven engineering, evidence over opinion, and inclusive by default.

Accessibility first is the brief, not a feature flag. Every feature is designed with neurodivergent-friendly patterns and WCAG 2.2 AA compliance from the ground up. Empathy-driven engineering means the team tests with the people the tool is built for. The product’s own description is direct: “the defaults serve the audience that has historically been served last.”

Inclusive by default is the most concrete principle in the list. The team’s own framing is that each learner deserves the same access to quality education, regardless of cognitive style, language, or device. The principles read like a bet on a market the team thinks has been underserved, and the underlying architecture stays local-first across every deployment.

Winning the AIB Small Budget Project of the Year tells me the future of AI isn’t bigger. It’s better placed.

The line came from Emanuel Covasa, founder and CEO of NeuroBridgeEDU, in remarks shared after the Croke Park ceremony. It captures the wager the team has been running since the first Python script, that a small, locally grounded build can serve users the cloud-first approach leaves behind. The prize sits in the €500 slot AIB reserves for the category.

What Else the €15,500 Recognised at Croke Park

The 2026 AIB Student Impact Awards programme featured 27 categories and a total prize fund of €15,500. ATU students alone took multiple wins across the categories, with eight further nominations that did not convert. ATU Sligo’s Students’ Union collected the Small Students’ Union of the Year award, worth €750. AIB’s framing of the awards as a whole stresses real-world skills in leadership, problem-solving, and financial literacy.

At third level, Queen’s Students’ Union in Belfast received the President’s Award for its Student Housing Co-operative, with a €1,000 prize attached. Enterprise and innovation recognition went to ReAble Labs, a Munster Technological University start-up founded by Sean Barrett that produces affordable 3D-printed prosthetic arms. Trinity College Dublin students were honoured in the fundraising category for their Med Day campaign.

NeuroBridgeEDU also collected a Merit Award at the 2026 Enterprise Ireland Student Entrepreneur Awards, held at TU Dublin, alongside co-founder Luc Dober, per the announcement of the Enterprise Ireland Merit Award. The same awards gave the overall Student Entrepreneur of the Year title and a €10,000 cash prize to Rory Staunton of ATU Sligo for his AURA Sports Cream, a chilli-infused muscle recovery product. A separate ATU Galway student, Sienna Joyce Faherty from the Aran Islands, won the Cruickshank High Achieving Merit Award for The Hill Café. The pattern across ATU’s 2026 awards is consistent: small teams, locally grounded products, and institutional validation, a category of student-built AI tool that includes efforts like how a UMass Lowell senior built Hawk Advisor for course advice.

ATU winners in the 2026 AIB Student Impact Awards

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NeuroBridgeEDU?

NeuroBridgeEDU is a desktop AI app that records lectures in real time, transcribes them locally on the user’s own device, and generates personalised study summaries. It is built around neurodivergent learners, ships with 32 EU languages, and runs without sending audio to a public cloud. The default product is free for individuals and open source.

Who is Emanuel Covasa?

Emanuel Covasa is a Romanian-Irish technologist studying for a BSc in Computer Networks and Cybersecurity at ATU Sligo, with an expected completion between 2023 and 2027. He is the founder and CEO of NeuroBridgeEDU and a self-described dyslexic and AuDHD builder. He is also the creator of the PromptSage prompt-engineering framework and the architect behind NeuroBridgeEDU’s local-first AI stack.

What did it cost to build NeuroBridgeEDU?

Covasa has said the project was built end-to-end for under €800 in tooling, on a custom AI-orchestration system. The AIB category he won explicitly rewards projects that achieve significant impact through resourcefulness and efficiency, and that meaningful change does not require large budgets.

How is NeuroBridgeEDU different from existing AI tools?

Existing productivity and transcription tools tend to send audio to a cloud service for processing. NeuroBridgeEDU splits the work between a local on-device layer and a larger on-premises model at the institution, so no recording leaves the user’s device or the institution’s hardware. It also ships with built-in output formats tailored to dyslexic, ADHD, and multilingual readers.