University College Cork today launched a new accelerator programme at its incubation centre GATEWAY UCC, with ten participants already signed up to benefit from the four-month-long SPRINT programme. Designed to support early stage start-ups, entrepreneurs and UCC-based researchers, the course focuses on commercialisation strategies and routes to market.

The first ten participants come from diverse areas such as bioinformatics, digital mobile, medical technology, eHealth, nutrition and food health as well as ICT.  These pre- and early stage startups will be working with seasoned business mentors, as well as being coached in business development, scaling and growth internationally.  The SPRINT programme is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland, Bank of Ireland and Cork City local enterprise office.

Intellectual Property

“Using our extensive experience in the area of commercialising research, early stage companies and spin-outs, this programme has been developed to increase the number and the success rate of knowledge-based startup companies, utilising intellectual property from UCC,” said Prof Anita Maguire, who heads the college’s innovation and research department.

The programme began last month and is specifically aimed at assisting researchers who want to commercialise their research by giving them the tools to start up a business based on their research activity.

In Association with

GATEWAY UCC is a purpose-built innovation and incubation centre with 21 own-door business units, jointly funded by UCC and Enterprise Ireland. The centre works with clients from their idea stage of development right through to eventual commercialisation.

Since it opened in 2011, GATEWAY UCC has supported over 30 startups, which now employ 180 people and contribute an estimated €13 million in wages to the local economy  and €4 million in tax annually.