This year’s NovaUCD Awards went virtual due to Covid-19, with seven awards handed out during an online event by the university’s innovation centre. 

The NovaUCD Innovation Award, which recognises excellence in innovation, success in commercialising UCD research, or intellectual activity over a number of years, went to Dr Fergal O’Reilly, who has been a researcher in the UCD School of Physics since 2005.

O’Reilly was a major contributor to SiriusXT, a School of Physics spin-out company that created a commercial, laboratory-based, soft x-ray microscope which can produce high resolution 3D images of cells and tissue that cannot be created any other way.

The devices are used primarily by researchers working in disease research and drug development. SiriusXT has raised more than €10m in grants and equity funding to develop and market the machines.

O’Reilly said: “I am so privileged to be able to contribute to the great team at SiriusXT who are developing critical imaging tools that will unpick biological mysteries that have an impact on us all.”

In Association with

The Founder of the Year award was presented to Bobby Healy (pictured), chief executive of Manna, the drone delivery ‘as-a-service’ company. Last year the company closed a €4.6m seed funding round led by US-based Dynamo VC.

The other awards included:

Invention of the Year: Professor Madeleine Lowery, UCD School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, for her Handalysis invention, a new approach to rate the decline in motor function for neuro-degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.

Spin-out of the Year: Output Sports for its system using advanced signal processing and machine learning to test athletic performance and track training programmes using a single wearable sensor.

Full details of the entire list, with videos of each, are available here.

Photo: Nick Bradshaw/Fotonic