Innovative ideas tested at Big Ideas showcase
Twenty-one new high-tech start-ups pitched their wares to an audience of venture capitalists and private investors last week at the Enterprise Ireland Big Ideas showcase, which was held in Croke Park.
The Big Ideas Showcase was the first event of its kind, and follows smaller sector-specific events hosted by the agency.
Among those presenting at the event was NUI Maynooth microbiology senior lecturer Kevin Kavanagh, who has developed BeeMune a new therapy for bees, which are currently being severely hit by a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Kavanagh said that while the general public usually associated commercial beekeeping with honey production, their main commercial role lies in pollination of crops.
Food crops to the value of $153 billion per annum are dependent on bee pollination and the disorder is so serious that it is threatening global food production.
In intensive farming areas, commercial beekeepers will bring in hives every year to ensure pollination. In the US alone, the bee keeping industry is a $1.2 billion annual industry.
While other researchers are trying to tackle the problem by targeting the pathogens causing the disorder directly, BeeMune provides bees with a number of feed supplements that boost their immune system.
Tests on individual bees have resulted in a 90 per cent survival rate among bees infected with pathogens that killed 100 per cent of uninfected bees, while tests on colonies yielded survival rates of 75 per cent.
Kavanagh is now looking for a partner to assist in launching into the US market in 2010, where capturing 5 per cent of the market would yield sales of $10 million per annum. Once this is achieved, he hopes to raise investment to finance expansion into other markets.
The conference also heard from Ken Fahy of EUV Source Solutions, which has emerged from the UCD School of Physics.
Fahy, with colleagues Fergal O’Reilly and Pau l Sheridan, has developed a liquid metal mirror that can be used in the production of the next generation of microchips.
Fahy explained that the new generation of chips will be constructed using a process known as extreme UV lithography.
Already the industry has spent $10 billion developing a process that will see a ultraviolet light used to mark out a chip.
The problem with the process is that a mirror is needed to harness the light source. ‘‘It is a hot, violent fireball and current state of the art mirrors are destroyed within days,” Fahy said.
EUV Source Solutions has developed a mirror that is essentially self healing, since it is formed with liquid metal. They estimate that each mirror could last up to one year, which would meet industry requirements.
The company has already received €800,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland, but will need to raise a further €2 million from investors in order to go onto the market by 2011.
Among the other pitches heard at the conference was one from John Colreavy, who is based at the Centre for Research in Engineering Surface Technology (Crest) in DIT.
Hospital acquired infections have been hitting the headlines of late, and Colreavy has developed Radical, a new compound that can be used to treat surfaces which will make them kill bacteria once exposed to light, including C. diff which cannot be addressed with cleaning fluids.
Colreavy explained that the substance could be mixed with paint, or else applied separately as a coating on tiles or other surfaces.
While intensive cleaning is the first line of defence employed by hospitals to fight infections, Radical would act as a second line, becoming active any time a light is switched on in a room.
Based on figures compiled by the NHS, he estimated that using would add 4.1 per cent to the overall cost of painting a hospital. However, it would save a facility around €3.6 million per year from the costs of treating infections.
Colreavy said that the product would be ready for market by 2011, and the company would require a funding round approximately 12 months from now, by which time he hoped a new management team would be appointed to oversee sales and marketing.
Colreavy was also among the winners of Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Awards, which were presented at the events to researchers who had successfully brought their technology onto the commercial market. He was recognised for the development of another for an antimicrobial coating that effectively kills MRSA and the e-coli bacteria.
The technology was licensed to General Paints.
The winner of the Life Sciences and Food Commercialisation Award was John Lowry from NUI Maynooth, who developed an implantable brain sensor that can record, in real time, changes in brain chemistry.
BlueBox Sensors was spun out from NUI Maynooth in July of this year and will formally launch in the US marketplace later this week.
The ICT Commercialisation Award went to Dan Barry from DIT, who invented a range of unique audio signal processing technologies, which have been licensed into the Sony PlayStation 3 Sing Star Karaoke game.
