UCD Innovation Academy Director Professor Suzi Jarvis announced as the 2019 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year Award.
Dublin, Ireland, 26 June 2020, NovaUCD today announced the winners of its annual innovation Awards. A total of 7 Awards, including the 2019 NovaUCD Innovation Award, were revealed during a virtual event, to highlight successes made in areas of commercialisation, consultancy, entrepreneurship and the promotion of an innovation culture, by members of the UCD community.
The Awards were due to be presented at an event in March which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Suzi Jarvis, Director, UCD Innovation Academy, received the 2019 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year Award.
The UCD Innovation Academy was launched in 2010 to shape creative minds capable of launching new ventures. It takes a highly action-oriented approach to Education 4.0, grounded in academic rigour, with a focus on creative problem solving in a real-world context.
Since it was established, the reach of the UCD Innovation Academy has grown annually and it now works with over 1,000 learners each year from UCD undergraduates to PhD students to educators as well as professionals from industry across all sectors instilling creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial mindsets in an ever growing number of people.
The other Awardees announced are as follows;
The 2019 NovaUCD Innovation Award, which recognises excellence in innovation or of successes achieved in the commercialisation of UCD research or other intellectual activity over a number of years, was presented to Dr Fergal O’Reilly, who has been a researcher in the UCD School of Physics since 2005.
Following the submission of a number of invention disclosures and the subsequent patenting of the disclosed technology by UCD, Dr O’Reilly co-founded SiriusXT with Dr Kenneth Fahy, Dr Paul Sheridan and Tony McEnroe based on the results of his research activities on soft x-rays and liquid optics over a near 10-year period.
SiriusXT, a UCD School of Physics spin-out company, has created the first commercial, laboratory-based, soft x-ray microscope which can produce high resolution 3D images of cells and tissue that cannot be produced any other way.
The award-winning company, an Enterprise Ireland high potential start-up, has now raised over €10 million in grant and equity funding. This includes just over €4.5 million in blended (grant and equity) funding recently awarded to the company from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Pilot programme.
The recipient of the 2019 NovaUCD Invention of the Year Award is Professor Madeleine Lowery, UCD School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. Professor Lowery received the Award for her Handalysis invention, a new approach to rate the decline in motor function for neuro-degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.
The recipient of the 2019 NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award is Output Sports. Output Sports has developed an end-to-end solution, using advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques, that can test multiple components of athletic performance and track training programmes using a single wearable sensor.
The company was co-founded by Dr Martin O’Reilly, Dr Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield as a spin-out from UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science and Insight, the SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics.
By the end of 2019 Output Sports prototypes were being used by over 40 professional teams, in Ireland, the UK and USA.
The recipients of the 2019 NovaUCD Consultancy of the Year Award are; Associate Professor Francesco Pilla, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy; Associate Professor David Timoney, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering along with Professor Robert Shorten and Assistant Professor Giovanni Russo, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
They were presented with this Award for a consultancy study commissioned by Toyota Ireland, through ConsultUCD, to investigate the energy behaviour of the Toyota Prius IV hybrid vehicle.
The recipient of the 2019 NovaUCD Founder of the Year Award is Bobby Healy, founder and CEO of Manna, the drone delivery ‘as-a-service’ company, who in 2019 closed a $5.2 million (€4.6 million) seed funding round, led by US-based Dynamo VC.
The recipients of the 2019 NovaUCD Licence of the Year Award are; Professor Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering and Dr Barry Heffernan for the licensing of the Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR) technology to OxyMem.
Professor Orla Feely, UCD Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact said, “I would like to congratulate all those who have received NovaUCD 2019 Innovation Awards. These Awards were established to recognise and highlight the successes being made by members of our research and entrepreneurial community across the University. I wish them all continuing success in the years ahead as they continue to deliver impact for the economy and society through their commercialisation,
For more information, take a look at the selection of UCD Innovation Academy Courses on offer.