GatewayUCC has announced the winners of its sixth SPRINT Awards for 2022. A total of 40% of participants are founders who are women, which represents the largest intake of females in the programme’s history.

The accelerator programme is designed to support early stage startups, entrepreneurs and UCC-based researchers, including those from Tyndall.

In the past nine years, GatewayUCC has supported over 70 startups and pre-startups based on IP from the university and those companies have raised in excess of €50m of public and private investment since foundation. 

L-R: Sally Cudmore, interim director of innovation, UCC; Prof William Scanlon, CEO, Tyndall National Institute; Dr Vitaly Zubialevich, researcher, Tyndall; Dr Felipe Murphy-Armando, researcher, Tyndall; Dr Xing Dai, researcher, Tyndall; Myriam Cronin, head of GatewayUCC; Leo Clancy, CEO, Enterprise Ireland

The winners:

  • SPRINT Investor Ready Award 2022 – Prof Deirdre Murray, Mike Cunneen, Liltoda Ltd.
  • INFANT – SPRINT Sustainability Technology Award 2022 – Dr Xing Dai, Fast Photonics, IPIC, Tyndall. Fast Photonics is a component supplier company, providing ultrafast photonic devices to module manufacturing companies in the supply chain of telecoms and datacom industries. This startup's products can help customers save 50% cost from the single component in each chip and retain the same performance by applying our new technology
  • SPRINT Clinical Impact Award 2022 – Dr Florence Herisson, Functional Food - Synbiotic functional food supplementation to improve key cardiac risk in metabolic syndrome patients, APC Microbiome Ireland.
  • SPRINT Disruptive Technology Award 2022 – Dr Felipe Murphy-Armando, Ultra-Sensitive Nano Material for Minimal Invasive Surgery, Tyndall. Human touch is extremely sensitive. To replicate this a probe inserted in the body would need to be fitted with tens of nano-sensors on the tip of the catheter requiring a material that is more sensitive and smaller than presently available. Sensitive touch feedback to surgeons is necessary for touch sensing during keyhole surgery to detect edges of tumours, veins and tissue identification. The discovery of a super-sensitive material, that is bio-compatible and can be made with current silicon fabrication technology is a game changer in the industry.
  • SPRINT Teagasc Innovation Award 2022 – Dr Maria Hayes, Pet Aging Wellness (PAW), Teagasc Moorepark.
  • SPRINT One to Watch Award 2022 – Dr Vitaly Zubialevich, GAINABLE – Virtual and Augmented Reality Gadgets, IPIC, Tyndall.Virtual and Augmented Reality Gadgets use µ-display as their core element. Gainable's technology is addressing the market need for µ-display solutions, qualitatively improving performance of VR Kits, enabling a new class of augmented reality wearables e.g. Smart Glasses.
  • SPRINT Public Welfare Impact Award 2022 – Dr Miguel Fernandez De Ullivarri, Novel Antifungal Peptides for Treatment Candidiasis, APC Microbiome Ireland.

The SPRINT Programme was developed to help spin-out and startup companies overcome challenges they may encounter when starting their businesses.

On the programme, pre- and early-stage startups work with business mentors who help the researchers and founders to bring their business from idea stage through to the eventual commercialisation of their product or service.

The SPRINT programme is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland, Bank of Ireland, Local Enterprise Office Cork City and Cork City Council.