Inventors of Moveable Oral Senor with Clinical Applications Receive 2025 NovaUCD Invention of the Year Award

Dr Emer Doheny, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Dr Jayne Carberry, UCD School of Medicine, have been named recipients of the 2025 NovaUCD Invention of the Year Award

They received the Award for a novel medical device, which they have developed and designed, that allows for the measurement and training of individual oropharyngeal muscles using a moveable oral sensor.

Their invention, which has been patented, has a number of potential clinical applications to address medical conditions, such as dysphagia or difficulties in swallowing associated with neurodegenerative disease, and respiratory sleep disorders including obstructive sleep apnoea.

Dr Doheny and Dr Carberry were presented with their Award by Professor Orla Feely, President, of University College Dublin (UCD) during the annual presentation of the NovaUCD Innovation Awards which took place at the UCD University Club.

Dr Emer Doheny is a Biomedical Engineering researcher in the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering whose interests include the use of wearable sensor data to develop new methods to remotely monitor sleep, respiration, and human movement, with applications in respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr Emer Doheny said, “We are honoured to receive this prestigious Award for our medical device invention which was the result of research funded under an internal UCD STEM challenge project.

Our project, which combined the expertise of myself and Jayne in clinical and biomedical engineering, was focused on developing a solution to help people who suffer from respiratory sleep disorders and medical conditions associated with dysphagia.”

Dr Jayne Carberry’s research interests in the UCD School of Medicine include a focus on whether speech pathology-led oropharyngeal muscle training can improve upper airway collapsibility and/or changes in tongue muscle strength and endurance, leading to improvements in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity for people who suffer from this medical condition.

Dr Jayne Carberry added, “Our next steps are to secure funding to perform further validation studies of our medical device. These validation studies will incorporate gamification and personalised therapy using AI, and our focus is to ultimately find new digital biomarkers related to dysphagia and obstructive sleep apnoea and to then explore the commercialisation opportunities through NovaUCD.”

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.

Speaking at the event Professor Orla Feely, UCD's president, said, “UCD is committed to delivering impact from our leading research and innovation across a broad range of disciplines. The NovaUCD Innovation Awards, which have become a key annual event, recognise the achievements of our research, innovation and entrepreneurial communities and demonstrate our strength in developing talent and creating and applying knowledge to deliver impact.

I congratulate all who have received this year’s Awards and wish the Awardees every future success as they continue to deliver impact in Ireland and further afield through their commercialisation, consultancy, entrepreneurial and innovation activities.”

A total of 7 Awards were presented by Professor Feely and the other Awardees are;

• 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Award: Professor Wenxin Wang, UCD Charles Institute of Dermatology, UCD School of Medicine
• 2025 NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award: LaNua Medical, co-founders, Tom Fitzmaurice, Dr Cormac Farrelly, UCD School of Medicine, Dr Eoin O'Cearbhaill and Sajjad Amiri, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering 
• 2025 NovaUCD Consultancy of the Year Award: Dr Siobhan Mullan, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine
• 2025 NovaUCD Licence of the Year Award: Professor Peter Kennedy, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• 2025 NovaUCD CEO of the Year Award: Mike McGearty, Meili
• 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year Award: Professor Kevin O’Connor, BiOrbic, Research Ireland Centre for Bioeconomy and UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science.

NovaUCD is supported under the KT Boost Programme co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union, through the ERDF Southern, Eastern & Midland Regional Programme 2021-2027.