NovaUCD today announced that HeyStaks, a social web search company, is the overall winner of SUSSED!, UCD’s €10K Entrepreneurship Competition.  HeyStaks  is developing a suite of online tools to make it easier for internet users to organise and share their internet search experiences without having to leave their favourite search engine. HeyStaks’ co-founders are Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs, early-stage researchers in UCD's School of Computer Science and Informatics and postdocs in CLARITY, The Centre for Sensor Web Technologies.

Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs co-founders, HeyStaks

On winning the competition, HeyStaks’ team members were presented with a cheque for €5,000. They will also receive 6-months free incubation space in NovaUCD and obtain professional support in further developing their new venture. HeyStaks will also go forward to represent UCD in the Europe-wide UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition for Students and Young Researchers which takes place later this year.

Most users when searching on the internet are looking for information that another user, with similar interests, has found previously. However to date there has been no easy way for individuals to collaborate on shared internet searches. HeyStaks’ online tools will now enable internet users to organise and share the pages they find while searching the internet, without having to leave Google or their favourite search engines.

HeyStaks allows internet users to create a ‘folder’ called a ‘search stak’ for any search interest, which they can share directly with other users or which can be made public so that anyone can subscribe to it. As stak members search, they contribute pages and associated query terms to the stak's data store. When another stak member searches for a similar query in the future, the pages that are most relevant to their query, as decided by the collective actions of the stak community, can be promoted and recommended within Google's standard result list.

Furthermore, if a particularly relevant page is found that does not appear in Google's result lists, users can tag the page with descriptive terms and it will appear in Google's result list in the future.

The objective of the SUSSED! competition, organised by NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre, was to transform business ideas emerging from students and early-stage researchers at UCD into business plans and commercial enterprises.

Two other short listed teams, XIT and OlympOzone, received runner-up prizes of €3,000 and €2,000 respectively in addition to 6-months free incubation space in NovaUCD.

XIT is developing a web-based travel planning application that allows users to more easily plan and share their travel experiences. XIT’s application sources information from multiple websites and social networks and can make recommendations inspired by previous trips made by friends and colleagues. The software creates a portable itinerary that can be used in hardcopy or on a mobile handset. XIT’s software also allows users to share their experiences after their trip or holiday.

Kevin O'Shaughnessy, XIT’s team leader is a postgraduate student in UCD’s National Institute of Technology Management as are the other three team members.

Eamonn Fallon, Daft.ie, Martin Wallace and Kevin O'Shaughnessy, co-founders of XIT with Dr Pat Frain

OlympOzone’s business idea is to provide a viable alternative for the use of chlorine in swimming pools in Ireland. OlympOzone aims to be the primary supplier and installer of Ozone water treatment systems in Ireland. The use of Ozone technologies to disinfect and treat swimming pools does not have any of the negative health side-effects associated with chlorine by-products. It is also more cost efficient and more environmentally friendly than using chlorine. 

Sinéad Quinn, OlympOzone’s team leader is a former competitive swimmer. She is also a lifeguard and swimming instructor and an undergraduate Cell and Molecular Biology student in UCD’s School of Biology and Environmental Science. OlympOzone’s other team members are fellow UCD undergraduate students Gavin Duffy and Liam Cody who are studying Biochemistry and Botany respectively.

Sinead Quinn, Liam Cody and Gavin Duffy, co-founders, OlympOzone

The members of the SUSSED! Judging Panel, who picked the winners following “Dragons’ Den” pitches by the six short listed finalists were; Eamonn Fallon, Managing Director and co-founder, Daft.ie; Dan Maher, founder, Nua Venture; Nicola Mitchell, Managing Director and founder, Life Scientific; Dr Brian Kelly, CEO and co-founder, Celtic Catalysts and Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD.

The other three short listed teams were Coast 2 Coast Coaching, FlyFit and SustainableMeter.

ENDS

23 June 2009

For further information contact Micéal Whelan, NovaUCD, e-mail: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, tel: (01) 716 3712.

Editors Notes

SUSSED! is UCD’s €10K Entrepreneurship Competition designed to showcase the energy and ideas emerging from UCD. The competition, which closed on May 15th, was open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students and early-stage researchers at UCD.

Coast 2 Coast Coaching (C2C) is an Irish soccer camp organisation which currently runs soccer camps for children in 17 cities in southern California. C2C, which partners with cities and school districts in this region, is the first and only soccer day camp provider in the US to exclusively use Irish coaches. C2C was established in 2005 by two enthusiastic sports professionals, Chris Murphy, currently an MBA student in UCD’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and Nicholas Telford.

FlyFit’s business idea is to establish gym/relaxation facilities throughout major international airport terminals. The objective is to alleviate passenger boredom and stress by helping them to proactively pass their time between delayed and connecting flights. FlyFit’s team members are Matthew Gleeson, Cathal Jenkinson and James McAlister, final year undergraduate students in UCD’s Quinn School of Business

SustainableMeter’s business idea is to provide water consumers with a low cost, user-friendly, real-time, web-enabled, digital water flow measurement system, called SustainableMeterTM. Dr Tom Curran, a lecturer in UCD’s School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine and Miguel Angel Prieto Lage a Biosystems Engineering postgraduate student at UCD are the team members.

NovaUCD is University College Dublin’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre.  NovaUCD is responsible for the commercialisation of intellectual property arising from UCD research. NovaUCD has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx.