NovaUCD 2006 Report
Foreword
NovaUCD the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at UCD, offers a comprehensive programme and facilities to support the commercialisation of research and other knowledge-intensive activity.
The growing level of R&D expenditure in UCD is fuelling the generation of increasing numbers of invention disclosures and other commercial opportunities. International experience has shown that successful commercialisation can only be achieved with the support of a strong and professional technology transfer office such as NovaUCD. Given the increasing pressures on Higher Education Institutions to demonstrate a return on the growing level of public investment in R&D and the long lead time involved in the successful commercialistion of the resulting intellectual property, Enterprise Ireland’s recent announcement to invest in strengthening the NovaUCD technology transfer team could not have been more timely.
In the last year, considerable progress has been made in developing the UCD community of innovators and entrepreneurs and in commercialising their research outputs mainly through licensing and new venture formation.
Key achievements during the last year include:-
- Thirty-seven inventions disclosures were reported to NovaUCD, an increase of over 50% from the previous year
- Fifteen priority patent applications were filed by UCD across all areas of life sciences, engineering and information communication technology
- Three PCT and two national/regional patents were filed
- Eleven license agreements were concluded with a range of indigenous and international companies
- UCD’s most successful licence to date which relates to the development of a BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) or ‘mad cow disease’ test has now earned almost €2 million in royalty income for UCD
- BiancaMed, a UCD spin-out company secured €2.5 million in investment from ePlanet Ventures and ResMed
- Other NovaUCD and UCD client companies have also successfully raised funding
- ChangingWorlds, a UCD spin-out company, expanded its Advanced Research Centre at NovaUCD. This Centre now employs a team of highly-qualified software engineers who are collaborating with researchers at UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics to build a pipeline of advanced personalisation technologies for the mobile telecommunications industry
- The promoters of 11 new ventures participated on the NovaUCD 2006 Campus Company Development Programme
- The NovaUCD 2006 Innovation Award was presented to Professor Conor Heneghan, co-founder of BiancaMed
- 95% of the incubation space at NovaUCD was occupied during the year by 26 knowledge-intensive ventures
- At the end of 2006 the first companies graduated from NovaUCD to make way for new clients as part of NovaUCD’s strategy of continuing to refresh our community of entrepreneurs.
During 2006 NovaUCD also introduced a number of new initiatives to support researchers and entrepreneurs. These included:
- UCD’s Intellectual Property Policy and Procedures (2006) was formally approved by the Governing Authority
- The level of support for client companies from the NovaUCD Network has continued to improve. The NovaUCD private sector sponsors provide a mix of expertise (accounting, financial, legal, marketing and strategic management) to complement the NovaUCD team in supporting innovators and entrepreneurs in bringing their ideas from the research laboratory through proof-of-principle and prototype development to successful commercialisation
- NovaUCD arranged and hosted 109 events to increase awareness of intellectual property and other commercial issues and to promote a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation among researchers, students and staff at UCD.
- NovaUCD was also involved in a number of organisations at national and international levels which were established to develop best practice, standards and recognition for the knowledge transfer profession and to provide a voice for knowledge transfer including AURIL, AURIL Ireland, Institute of Knowledge Transfer and ProTon Europe.
These and other developments are outlined further in this Report.
Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD
May 2007
For further information contact: Micéal Whelan, NovaUCD, tel: (01) 716 3712, e-mail: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie.
NovaUCD 2006 Report (236 kbs)