Enterprise Ireland presents Commercialisation Awards to entrepreneurial researchers

Mr. Conor Lenihan T.D., Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation today (13th October 2009) launched the Enterprise Ireland Big Ideas Showcase 2009 which will pitch 21 exciting new technologies to over 200 potential investors in Croke Park.

The Big Ideas Showcase is part of the Government's strategy to commercialise publicly funded research, which has produced over 100 new companies to date, the majority of which were created in the last 3-5 years.   The event will see 150 one-to-one meetings take place between Irish inventors and investors to explore the options to either licence these new technologies or use them as the basis to form new companies in the energy, life sciences, medical, engineering and IT sectors.

Among the new inventions are; a no-needle vaccination patch, holograms that thieves cannot counterfeit, bacteria that eat plastic and turns it into eco-friendly fat, an indoor GPS system, paint that kills MRSA on contact, melt-in-the-mouth tablets and IT solutions that will mean you can instantly access the internet in WiFi hotspots and in awkward areas where there is currently no line-of-sight broadband access.

Minister Lenihan, who also presented the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Awards at the event commented, "This event demonstrates the spectrum of entrepreneurial activity in the Irish research system. At the early stages we have 21 new technologies that are generating high levels of interest from the potential investors here today, and at other end, we have three award winners who have already succeeded in getting their technologies onto the marketplace, creating 20 new jobs in the process. I look forward to the creation of more new companies and jobs as a result of today's Big Ideas Showcase".

The Commercialisation Awards went to Professor John Lowry, Head of Chemistry at NUI Maynooth and founder of Blue Box Sensors Ltd; Dr. John Colreavy from CREST at DIT who has licensed his microbial coatings that kill MRSA and E-coli to paint manufacturer General Paints Ltd, and Dan Barry Senior Researcher with the Audio Research Group at DIT for his audio technologies that he has licensed to Irish company Trezur and Sony for use in their popular Playstation 3 Sing Star karaoke game.

ENDS

(This press release is also available on the Departments website at www.entemp.ie)

For more information on the Big Ideas Showcase contact:

Grace Labanyi (nee Fitzgerald) Communications Officer, Enterprise Ireland Tel +353 (0)87 3286404

For more information on Blue Box Sensors Ltd contact:

Deirdre Watters, Head of Marketing and Communications, NUI Maynooth Tel: +353 (0)86 803 5274

For more information on Dan Barry and Dr. John Colreavy's technologies contact:

Sinead Copeland, Public Relations Officer Dublin Institute of Technology Tel: 01 402 7131

 
Winners of the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Awards:

Professor John Lowry, founder of Blue Box Sensors Ltd.
Prof Lowry won the award for bringing his decade-long work in sensor technology to the marketplace through a company called BlueBox Sensors.  The company spun out from NUI Maynooth in July of this year and will formally launch to the US marketplace later this week.
Enterprise Ireland invested almost €1million in the research project to develop it into a spin-out company working closely with the Commercialisation Office at NUI Maynooth.
 
BlueBox Sensors produces implantable brain sensors that can record, in real time, changes in brain chemistry.  It is particularly useful in the quest to develop drugs to treat diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Schizophrenia. The sensors will be used by pharmaceutical companies early in the new product development phase, to understand how new drugs are working and eliminate those that are not successful. This technology replaces current micro-dialysis processes which only give readings on analysis post-treatment and are therefore slower and less illuminating.  The company already counts major pharma players Eli Lilly, Solvay Pharmaceuticals and GSK amongst its clients.  The company expects to create up to ten direct highly skilled jobs over the next three years with further employment opportunities for sub contractors.

Dr. John Colreavy, DIT and HyGen:
Dr. Colreavy and his team at CREST DIT have developed an antimicrobial coating that effectively kills MRSA and the e-coli bacteria. The technology was licensed to General Paints Celbridge Co. Kildare who used it as a basis of a new anti microbial paint - HyGen.  General Paints with their partner Tegral have secured their first sale of this product to Beaumont hospital.  Given the high incidences of hospital acquired infection globally, the company is confident that their project has good export potential.  To this end, they are working activity with the Enterprise Ireland overseas network to secure export sales early in the New Year.

As a result of this deal, General Paints hopes to create 10 extra jobs with forecast sales of €4 million within 4 years.

Dan Barry, DIT and his audio technologies:
Dan Barry is a senior researcher in the Audio Research Group at DIT and has invented a range of unique audio signal processing technologies that have captured the interest and acclaim of a variety of companies and analysts around the world and here in Ireland.  His technologies allow people to sing karaoke style alongside the original sound tracks of their favourite bands.   This was licensed into the popular Sony Playstation 3 Sing Star Karaoke game.  His technologies also allow you to practice playing any instrument alongside your favourite musician and then substitute for that musician and play with the rest of his or her band.  He has also taken the snap crackle and pop out of 45's and 75's and even drum recordings from the Irish Traditional Music Archives.  His technologies can slow down or speed up any artist say Paul Mc Carthy without changing his pitch and of course he can also change his pitch so you can see what a female equivalent might have been. 

Dan won the award for licensing many of these technologies to Trezur Ltd, an Enterprise Ireland client that specialises in music software and services. The addition of the range of technologies Dan developed greatly enhances Trezur's ability to serve its markets.

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