Big ideas in Irish tech pitched to investors at Croke Park


13 Oct 2009

Paint that kills MRSA on contact and bacteria that eat plastic and turn it into eco-friendly fat are just some of the 21 exciting new technologies being pitched to potential investors at the Enterprise Ireland Big Ideas Showcase 2009, which is taking place in Croke Park today.

The Big Ideas Showcase forms part of the Government’s strategy to commercialise publicly funded research, which has produced more than 100 new companies to date, the majority of which were created in the past three to five years.  

Meeting of the minds

The event will see 150 one-to-one meetings take place between Irish inventors and some 200 investors to explore the options to either license 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 Wi-Fi hotspots and in awkward areas where there is no line-of-sight broadband access.

The Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation Conor Lenihan TD launched the Big Ideas Showcase 2009 today and also presented the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Awards at the event.

And the award goes to …

The Commercialisation Awards went to Prof 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 its popular PlayStation 3 Sing Star karaoke game.

“This event demonstrates the spectrum of entrepreneurial activity in the Irish research system,” said Lenihan.

“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.”

Article courtesy of businessandleadership.com

Photo: Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation Conor Lenihan TD.

Photo by Conor McCabe/Jason Clarke Photography