Dear Colleagues and Friends

Welcome to the last issue of the NovaUCD Newsletter for 2008.

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The major success story for 2008 was the sale of ChangingWorlds. This spin-out company from UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics was co-founded in 1999 by Professor Barry Smyth and Paul Cotter. It is being acquired by Amdocs the US-quoted technology company for $60 million plus a deferred consideration which is dependent on the performance of the company over the next two years. The success of ChangingWorlds will hopefully be an inspiration for academic entrepreneurs who are interested in establishing new ventures to commercialise innovative ideas emerging from university research.

 
Professor Barry Smyth, co-founder ChangingWorlds and winner of the NovaUCD 2005 Innovation Award

NovaUCD celebrated its fifth birthday in October. While international experience shows that there is a long lead-time involved in commercialising the output of university research, a lot has been achieved by the innovators and entrepreneurs supported by NovaUCD during its first five years of operation. In this Newsletter we look back at some of the results achieved since NovaUCD officially opened in October 2003.

Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD

The 13th Campus Company Development Programme Awards Evening took place in November. The overall winner was ASimil8 co-founded by Paul Groarke and Garrett Hussey. ASimil8, which is located at NovaUCD, is a new eLearning venture which has developed a next generation learning platform to provide immersive education for languages and other subjects using virtual world and gaming technologies.

Paul Groarke and Garrett Hussey, co-founders, ASimil8

The 11th NovaUCD ‘Entrepreneurs Live!’ seminar series which is supported by the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Enterprise Board has now been completed. Podcasts of the latest seminars are available online. To date 64 entrepreneurs have contributed to these seminars which have continued to attract a large audience and to stimulate lively debates on issues relating to entrepreneurship and new venture formation. The series will run again during 2009.

Sean Fee, CEO & co-founder, iFoods.tv

In this issue we also report on other recent developments for BiancaMed, ChangingWorlds, Interleado and Q-Validus and the presentation of Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Awards to two UCD researchers.

Dr Conor Hanley, CEO & co-founder, BiancaMed

I would welcome any comments or feedback on this issue. Please contact Micéal Whelan on t: 01-716 3712 or e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie.

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Dr Pat Frain, Director

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