Congratulations to UCD School of Medicine’s Prof Wenxin Wang, Dr Jayne Carberry and Dr Cormac Farrelly, who were among the Award winners at this year’s 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Awards.
A total of 7 Awards were presented by Professor Orla Feely, UCD, President:
2025 NovaUCD Innovation Award: Professor Wenxin Wang, UCD Charles Institute of Dermatology, UCD School of Medicine
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
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.
Speaking at the event Professor Feely 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.”
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.
UCD School of Medicine Awardees
LaNua Medical Receives 2025 NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award
LaNua Medical is developing a groundbreaking medical device designed to make minimally invasive, x-ray guided, endovascular treatment of numerous conditions including internal bleeding, vascular malformations and many benign and malignant tumours safe and effective. This should make procedures quicker and more straightforward for operators, providing a cost-effective solution for healthcare systems and lead to consistent outcomes for patients.
LaNua Medical was presented with the Award by Professor Orla Feely, President, University College Dublin (UCD) during the annual presentation of the NovaUCD Innovation Awards which took place at the UCD University Club.
The company was co-founded in 2024 by Dr Cormac Farrelly, UCD School of Medicine, Dr Eoin O'Cearbhaill and Sajjad Amiri, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering along with Tom Fitzmaurice, formerly a Vice-President at Medtronic, following the completion of an Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund research project at the University.
On receiving the 2025 NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award, Dr Cormac Farrelly, co-founder, LaNua Medical, said, “As an Interventional Radiologist over the last 2 decades, I have witnessed first-hand how technological advances in minimally invasive x-ray guided endovascular treatments have led to powerful patient benefits.
Twenty-five years after graduating from UCD’s medical school it is an honour to be part of the winning team of this year’s NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award. Without the support of NovaUCD and Enterprise Ireland we would not now find ourselves in such an exciting position.”
LaNua Medical’s pioneering device named ECORE™ will help to modernize embolization procedures, a technique used by surgeons and radiologists to control the flow of blood in certain areas of the body. Designed to enhance the safe and targeted delivery of tools used to block blood flow, the device will enter blood vessels deep within the body and form an occlusive barrier.
In a major step for embolization procedures, the ECORE™ device will allow doctors to restrict blood flow in a targeted segment of veins or arteries while still allowing ancillary medical tools (guidewires and catheters) to pass through it.
LaNua is initially targeting treatments in liver cancer patients.
Dr Cormac Farrelly added, “Add to that the extensive MedTech ecosystem available in Ireland, which is ideal for medical device development, regulatory approval, manufacture and scale and the future looks bright. We know there is a lot of work to do but I strongly believe LaNua Medical’s ECORE™ device will save the lives of many patients and improve the quality of life for countless others.”
During 2024 LaNua Medical closed a €6 million seed funding round, co-led by Elkstone and Atlantic Bridge, with participation from Enterprise Ireland and Furthr VC, to accelerate product development, gain entry into the US market and hire staff in roles across R&D and Quality. The company also established offices at NovaUCD and in Galway.
Tom Fitzmaurice, CEO and co-founder, LaNua Medical added, “It is a great honour to receive this recognition today. We would like to thank NovaUCD for their support throughout our early stages in UCD and as we closed our seed round, spinning out in quarter four last year. It is exciting to see the breadth and depth of talent and skillsets available to a start-up in the Irish MedTech environment as our planned activity accelerates.
We are now focused on building our team in Galway and Dublin and finalising our design activity in 2025. We will complete our device testing and US regulatory filing next year and commence clinical validation of the ECORETM device in 2027.”
LaNua Medical was also named the winner of Enterprise Ireland's Big Ideas competition in 2024 and represented Ireland at the Pegasus Startup World Cup in San Francisco.
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, 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.”
Skin and Wound Healing Research Expert and Entrepreneur Receives 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Award
Professor Wenxin Wang, a leading skin and wound healing research expert and entrepreneur, and a Research Ireland Principal Investigator at the UCD Charles Institute of Dermatology, UCD School of Medicine, has been named the recipient of the 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Award.
This Award recognises excellence in innovation or of successes achieved in the commercialisation of UCD research, or other intellectual activity, by the Awardee over a number of years.
Professor Wang was presented with his Award by Professor Orla Feely, President, University College Dublin (UCD) during the annual presentation of the NovaUCD Innovation Awards which took place at the UCD University Club.
Professor Wang’s academic and research expertise is focused on areas of biomaterials, stem cell and gene therapy for the treatments of skin wounds, cartilage/bone regeneration, including dental tissue regeneration.
On receiving the 2025 NovaUCD Innovation Award, Professor Wenxin Wang, said, “I am delighted to receive this Award from NovaUCD as my dream and passion is always within innovation and scientific discovery, using my talents with an ultimate goal of translating my scientific discovery into real-world applications to benefit humankind. In the years ahead I will keep pursuing this life mission of mine.”
Professor Wang’s intellectual property portfolio includes 12 invention disclosures to NovaUCD, being a named inventor on 30+ patents during his career, and launching and commercialising multiple developed technologies onto the market.
He is also a serial entrepreneur and the founder of three start-up companies, including Vornia, which was acquired by Ashland in 2018, Bláfar, and Branca Bunús a UCD spin-out biotech company which he founded in 2019.
Branca Bunús is focused on developing and commercialising polymer-based gene therapies for patients suffering from genetic disorders.
Branca Bunús has secured multiple patents, European Medicines Agency orphan drug designation, and ISO 9001:2015 certification, positioning the company as a leader in non-viral gene delivery field. The company which currently employs a staff of 7 recently relocated from NovaUCD to Cherrywood as part of its strategy to grow and scale.
Professor Wang has also developed strong links with industry partners, which includes collaborating with Amryt Pharma, Curran Scientific Ltd and DEBRA Ireland on an €8+ million DTIF funded project. This project focused on the development of a disruptive gene therapy platform to replace viruses in the treatment of genetic conditions, such EB (Epidermolysis Bullosa), using a new polymer-based delivery platform.
Professor Wang has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers and is also a strong advocate in supporting the next generation of researchers and innovators as he has supervised and graduated 27 PhD students and mentored over 25 postdoctoral researchers.