Assoc. Prof. Eoin O'Cearbhaill receives 2023 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year award

Associate Professor Eoin O'Cearbhaill from UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Fellow, UCD Conway Institute has received the 2023 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year award.

He was presented with the award by Professor Mark Rogers, Acting UCD President, as part of the annual presentation of the NovaUCD Innovation Awards, which took place at the UCD University Club.

Associate Professor Eoin O'Cearbhaill

Speaking at the event, Professor Mark Rogers, Acting UCD President said, “The NovaUCD Innovation Awards are a key annual event at UCD recognising and highlighting successes achieved by our research, innovation and entrepreneurial communities across the University and I congratulate all those who have received awards. I would also like to take the opportunity of wishing them ongoing success in the future as they continue to deliver economic and societal impact through their commercialisation, consultancy, entrepreneurial and innovation activities.”

Assoc. Prof. O'Cearbhaill is co-Director of the UCD BE and ME Biomedical Engineering programmes  and is also the Director of the UCD Centre for Biomedical Engineering and a funded investigator within the SFI Research Centres, Cúram, I-Form and Amber.

Assoc. Prof.  O’Cearbhaill is focused on the translation of medical devices from concept through to clinical use and his research interests include; medical device innovation, design and commercialisation, particularly minimally invasive devices and delivery systems.

Since joining UCD in 2013, Assoc. Prof. O’Cearbhaill has been championing the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship. Through his research group he has supported multiple research teams, over many years, to complete NovaUCD commercialisation programmes, including the UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator. 

These include Latch Medical, a UCD spin-out headquartered at NovaUCD, along with emerging UCD start-ups, Lia Therapeutics and LaNua Medical, both of which are currently fund raising. A previous member of his research team, Dr Nicky Bertollo won the 2018 UCD Allergan Innovation award for novel medical device design, as part of the UCD Conway Institute Festival of Research & Innovation.

On receiving the 2023 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year Award, Eoin O'Cearbhaill, said, “I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of the wonderful team of researchers and innovators that I have had the fortune to work with over the past several years at UCD.”

“I would like to thank the NovaUCD team for helping to create a culture of innovation and an emerging medtech ecosystem at UCD. I’d also like to thank our funding agencies, particularly the great support from Enterprise Ireland especially through the Commercialisation Fund, which is a wonderful funding mechanism to advance university-based spin-out companies.”

Assoc. Prof. O’Cearbhaill has also introduced a Medical Device Design module, based on the Stanford Biodesign process, to help foster medtech innovation as part of the engineering teaching curriculum and has been involved in multiple industry collaborative projects with national and international medical device companies.

He has also co-invented 12 issued or pending medical device patents.

The annual NovaUCD Innovation Awards highlight successes made in areas of knowledge transfer, consultancy, entrepreneurship and the promotion of an innovation culture, by members of the UCD research, innovation and entrepreneurial community.

A total of 7 Awards were presented by Professor Mark Rogers, Acting UCD President during an event held in the UCD University Club. Two other Conway Fellows were also recognised; 

Professor Stefan Oscarson, UCD School of Chemistry received the 2023 NovaUCD Innovation Award and Associate Professor Siobhán McClean, UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science won the 2023 NovaUCD Licence of the Year Award.