Welcome to the final issue of the NovaUCD Newsletter for 2009 in which we review activities, events and news of interest which took place during the last quarter of the year.

 

Click here to download the complete newsletter.

NovaUCD, as the hub of knowledge transfer activities at UCD, has had another successful year in supporting the commercialising of the university’s research outputs. Six new UCD spin-out companies have been incorporated, 84 inventions have already been disclosed by UCD academics and 42 patent applications have been filed.

The 14th NovaUCD Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP) Awards Evening took place in November. Equinome which is developing genetic tests to optimise decision-making in the breeding and racing of Thoroughbred horses was the overall winner.  Equinome was founded by Dr Emmeline Hill, a leading horse genomics researcher in UCD’s School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine, in partnership with Mr Jim Bolger, a leading Irish race horse trainer.

Dr Emmeline Hill

UCD spin-out, HeyStaks Technologies, which has developed a revolutionary social Web search platform, was declared the overall winner of the inaugural, Europe-wide, UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition for Students and Young Researchers at an event held in Paris. HeyStaks, along with the elearning venture RendezVu, has also been short listed for the 2009 David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Award.

Dr Maurice Coyle and Dr Peter Briggs

Congratulations are also due to Yuandong Zhu, a PhD student in UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics, and a participant on this year’s CCDP, who was awarded the student medal at the 2009 Irish Software Association Awards.

The 13th NovaUCD ‘Entrepreneurs Live!’ seminar series which is supported by the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Enterprise Board has now been completed. To date 75 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 2010.

Dr Eddie O'Connor with UCD Masters in Energy Sytems Students, Robert Harte and Lucy Hawkes

In this issue we report on recent developments for Alternative Energy Resources, Duolog Technologies, Fitfone and Visor. In other news we report on the €23 million expansion of the AIB Seed Capital Fund and recent developments in the InterTradeIreland All-island Innovation Programme along with profiling WirelessLAB, the new innovation network for Ireland’s wireless technology community.

Mark Webster, Sunday Business Post, John Travers, AER and James Grier, Ulster Business

Click here to download the complete newsletter.

ENDS

17 December 2009

For further information contact Micéal Whelan on t: 01-716 3712 or e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie.