AI job interview coaching tool wins 2025 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition
23 June 2025
Zander Deans-Xiao, founder of Athena Credit: Paul Sharp/Sharppix
A start-up company developing an AI coaching tool to help candidates perform in job interviews has won the 2025 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition.
Athena was named the winner of the €3,000 NovaUCD One to Watch Prize following pitches to a judging panel at the end of the competition, an intensive four-week accelerator programme for student entrepreneurs.
The start-up was founded by Zander Deans-Xiao, who has just completed a BSc in Economics and Finance at the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business.
Athena is a hyper-personalised, recruiter-trained AI tool that adapts to both candidates and jobs, helping candidates to perform confidently and authentically in high-stakes interviews.
“It is a great honour for Athena to have been named the winner of the One to Watch prize, especially as the pitches delivered by my fellow programme participants were of a very high standard,” said Deans-Xiao.
“Athena’s deeper mission goes beyond performance – it’s about helping candidates find clarity, confidence, and their authentic voice in moments that shape their future. We believe scalable AI should make people more human, not less.
“Our current go-to-market strategy includes university partnerships, student society demos and recruiter pilots, and our aim is to empower students to confidently showcase their unique strengths without compromising authenticity.”
The annual NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition was established to mentor and support UCD undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to work together to develop and grow start-ups.
Over the last 11 years, more than 90 early-stage ventures and 220 students have completed the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition.
Ten early-stage student ventures and 20 participants completed this year’s four-week programme. Sponsored by renewable energy developer Terra Solar, the programme featured a series of structured and interactive workshops.
Topics including customer development, value proposition, design thinking, prototyping, environment mapping, fundraising and pitching were covered.
“A key objective of the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition is to provide the students with the skills, the confidence, and the opportunity to further develop their business ideas – and hopefully, in time, launch their start-ups in Ireland and even internationally,” said Liam Cronin, Director of Innovation at UCD.
“I wish Zander every success as he progresses his new venture in the months ahead.”
By: Rebecca Hastings, Digital Journalist, UCD University Relations
To contact the UCD News & Content Team, email: newsdesk@ucd.ie
