Image: NDRC
The NDRC programme, which aims to support promising researchers, awarded the top prize to ChirpComm for its signal modulation chips.
Today (30 June), Cork-based ChirpComm was named winner of the NDRC Pre-Commercialisation Programme, beating nine other competitors in the programme’s showcase.
ChirpComm provides smartphone manufacturers and mobile chipset vendors with signal modulation chips, which the team describes as superior to and compatible with previous-generation wireless communication systems.
Its chipset, based on proprietary chirped orthogonal waveform technology, is said to give a four-fold improvement in network capacity over competing techniques, at the same cost.
The ChirpComm team is based at the Irish Photonic Integration Centre at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork.
Commercialising research
The NDRC’s Pre-Commercialisation Programme aims to identify and support promising researchers as they explore a pathway to commercialising their research.
Participants are introduced to entrepreneurial tools and techniques, work collaboratively as part of a commercially focused team, meeting entrepreneurial role models and expanding their networks over a five-month period.
Over the past three years, teams on the programme have gone on to raise more than €3m in funding.
Helen Fullen, pre-accelerator leader at NDRC, commented: “Congratulations to ChripComm on the win today, a very exciting proposition to emerge from research with a significant global market opportunity.
“The quality of pre-commercialisation teams continues to improve each year. At NDRC, we want to see more ideas like this and to meet innovative researchers and scientists with a passion to change the world.”
Kevin Burke, senior commercialisation specialist at Enterprise Ireland, added: “The programme helps research scientists acquire new commercialisation skills so they can develop, test and validate their initial customer and product assumptions, with a view to applying for follow-on Enterprise Ireland commercialisation funding.
“Our team of commercialisation specialists will continue to work closely with the participant teams to help them achieve their commercialisation ambitions.”
The other teams taking part in the Pre-Commercialisation Programme showcase were health monitoring platform DSRL; optical monitoring device FloDX; pharmaceutical coating monitoring tech iSlight; online learning platform LCP; biomarker-based health platform MetHealth; agri-food start-up Organic Proof; road repair tech Self-healing Asphalt; energy efficient IoT sensor project SensePower; and retail-tech platform RDex.
