Dr Peter Richardson, a post-doctoral researcher in UCD's School of Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering, who took part in the UCD Commercialisation Bootcamp to develop commercial ideas for smart grid applications in power systems
Thirty-seven researchers hailing from both UCD and the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) have just finished up a new five-week bootcamp at NovaUCD, with the goal being to upskill them on how to find commercial opportunities from their research outputs.
The bootcamp, which was delivered by staff of UCD’s Office of the Vice-President for Innovation, took place over the past five weeks at NovaUCD.
The bootcamp is now set to run bi-annually and the aim is to strengthen the pipeline of commercial opportunities arising from UCD and NCAD research programmes.
To be eligible to take part in the programme, researchers need to have a specific piece of research or technology they believe has commercialisation scope.
Caroline Gill, manager of innovation education at UCD, co-devised the bootcamp. She said researchers who take part in the programme will gain insight into key commercialisation issues, such as identifying the market problem or need and how their proposed solution or technological innovation solves this problem.
Participants on the first bootcamp represented 19 potential commercial projects emerging from research taking place at UCD and at NCAD.
One of the participants was Dr Peter Richardson, a post-doctoral researcher in UCD’s School of Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering.
Richardson and his colleague Dr Andrew Keane participated in the bootcamp to further develop their commercial ideas for smart grid applications in power systems. The goal of their project is to develop software tools that will enable power systems to successfully incorporate new technologies and energy resources, such as wind generation, on existing electricity networks.
“Participating on the bootcamp has been a great experience and we are now looking forward to putting all we have learned into commercial practice in the near future,” said Richardson.
Brendan Cremen, UCD’s director of Enterprise and Commercialisation, said some of the projects may end up taking part in VentureLaunch, the new three-month accelerator programme that is replacing the NovaUCD Campus Company Development Programme.
