University of Salford Inaugural AJ Bell Technology Award Winners announced

The ‘AJ Bell Technology Award’ was launched earlier this year and recognises top-performing students studying Computer Science subjects by giving them a financial incentive to help with their studies. Students from four courses were eligible for the awards:

• Computer Science
• Computer Science with Data Analytics
• Computer Science with Cyber Security
• Software Engineering

The winners of the 2020/2021 Award are:

• Zakrea Almansouri (Level 6),  Computer Science with Data Analytics
• Muhammad Tahir Ali, (Level 5), Computer Science
• Alexandru Iancu, (Level 4), Computer Science

All three winners were presented with the award at a small ceremony held at the University of Salford’s main campus. Following this, the winners were invited to visit AJ Bell’s Salford HQ to meet senior members of its IT team and see first-hand the crucial role technology plays at one of the UK’s leading investment platforms. The awards were presented by Mo Tagari, AJ Bell’s Chief Technology Officer and Dr Julian Bass, Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of Salford.

Mo Tagari, CTO, AJ Bell said: “It has been a pleasure to sponsor these awards and see what it means to the students to be recognised as excelling in their studies and to pick up a financial incentive to help with their studies or career development. As a major tech employer in Manchester, we recognise the importance of helping the next generation of tech talent and we’d love to see some of them become AJ Bell employees. Recruiting the best students in this way would be a great addition to our award-winning apprenticeship scheme which has welcomed 82 young people to the business over the past 5 years across technology, operations and investments.”

Dr Bass, The University of Salford said:  “ We would like to thank AJ Bell for their support and inspiring our students to be truly unstoppable.  It is evident that technology skills are growing in demand and initiatives such as this gives us the opportunity to work alongside our industry partners to provide students with an insight into the real world and enhance their employability. A huge congratulations to the winners, we look forward to celebrating your success.”

Image, from Left to Right

Professor Joe Sweeney, Mo Tagari (AJ Bell) , Zakrea Almansouri (winner), Muhammad Tahir Ali (winner), Alexandru Iancu (winner) and Dr Julian Bass