Our Trip to the LFDT Summit

Great two days at the LFDT Summit. Congratulations to Peter Finnegan and Liam Fitzgerald for bringing the stakeholders in Ireland’s Deeptech Innovation ecosystem.

A common thread across all the panel discussions was ‘how do we enhance the formation and development of spin-out and spin-off from the university’.

Universities or research institutes play a crucial role in the formation and development of spin-out companies as they are a source of both personnel and ideas.It was great to hear from the panels on Day 1 and Day 2 about the difficulties in spinning-out, from raising capital, managing growth or even penetrating newer markets. Founding a start-up out of a research institute is a challenge for entrepreneurs as academic researchers often lack the knowledge or the expertise to commercialise their research results. However, it is important to recognise these challenges as academic spin-outs can help to transfer tech from universities and research institute to industry especially when the technology needs to be developed further and there is a funding gap.The live Q&A gave the audience an opportunity to engage with the decision-makers and key ecosystem stakeholders and put forward some of the challenges in the current framework as well as learn that they are beginning to take a more proactive role in spin-out company formation and development.

Day 2 was all about the Irish Spin-outs!It was a delight to hear some of the leading researchers pitch their projects in front of a live audience. Some of the projects included FloDx - a bacterial growth measurement device providing real-time data on various parameters as well as in any incubator-based setting, developed by a group of scientist at CIT including (Dr,Chinna, Dr.Vamsi and Dr.Uday), StimOxyGen - a nanoparticle formulation that dissolves at low pH and transiently generates oxygen in hypoxic tumours thus making the current treatments for solid tumour successful and Sym03 led by ERI researcher, Dr. Linda O’Higgins, they are using LED light technology to boost yields of fish oils produced by photosynthetic algae.

We are excited to see more of these innovations taking shape in real life and witnessing the next surge of innovation powered by new technologies.