Innovation and entrepreneurship, visit to Nova UCD

H.E. the French Ambassador to Ireland, accompanied by the director of the French commercial bureau Ubifrance and the scientific cooperation attaché were invited to visit the NovaUCD centre of University College Dublin (UCD) this past Thursday. There, he met with Orla Feely, vice-president “Research, Innovation, Impact”, Ciaran O’Beirne, director of the NovaUCD incubator , Nicola Mitchell, an entrepreneur hosted by UCD who manages a start-up working closely with the French agrifood sector as well as three directors of the interdisciplinary research centres implemented within the university, Mark O’Malley, Joe Carthy and Brian Caulfield.

Created in October 2003 under a public-private partnership, NovaUCD is a company incubator located within the university. The objective was to accompany researchers and entrepreneurs in commercializing innovative products, techniques or services developed by the UCD research centres by helping them to find industrial or commercial partners.

Orla Feely, vice-president “Research, Innovation, Impact”, Ciaran O’Beirne, director of the NovaUCD incubator, Joe Carthy, director of the computer interdisciplinary research centre and Nicola Mitchell, agrifood entrepreneur

A few figures after ten years of existence : 445 patented inventions, 242 projects supported, 30 start-up created, 81 operating licences, over 2,500 jobs co-financed and another 1,200 before 2016, over 6 million Euros contracts co-signed between UCD and the companies hosted by NovaUCD.
Created in 1854, University College Dublin, who has since trained half of all Irish Taoiseach, plays an essential part in the scientific relationships between France and Ireland. France is Ireland’s third partner when it comes to research collaboration and Ireland’s fourth partner regarding international co-publications. UCD is also supporting the Franco-Irish research mobility programme Ulysses. It is also the first Irish university co-financing research projects with France. The campus hosts numerous researchers in various domains from marine energies, chemistry, biology, law and cyber-security to name but a few. Numerous partnerships with French companies have also been established among which are Servier, EDF or Alstom.

This visit was the occasion for both teams to discuss future strategic partnerships especially in the areas of environmental, energy and computer research. The latter will be of particular interest as the French commercial bureau Ubifrance will invite 10 French start-ups to attend the “Web Summit”, a world professional event gathering hundreds of web and tech companies in Dublin every year in November.