The challenges of spinning out successful companies from university research, Tom Flanagan, NovaUCD

Interesting interview  with Tom Flanagan, UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation, NovaUCD

What is your background briefly?

I graduated as an engineer from University College Dublin (UCD), completed a Masters in Aston University in Birmingham, invented a few things early on in my career that I championed to world-wide deployment, rose up through the ranks of corporate America to Vice-President for Sales and Marketing at Nortel.

At Nortel I was involved in creating new business units, new products and services in telecommunications before returning to Dublin and becoming involved in the start-up scene.  I set up the first Knowledge Transfer Office and Innovation Centre, Hothouse at DIT before moving to UCD to lead NovaUCD two years ago.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Yes, absolutely I love to challenge researchers to create inventions and I love to help entrepreneurs and innovators develop commercial applications so we can bring these breath-taking inventions to the world and make a real difference to people’s lives and society in general.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

I help entrepreneurs to launch, develop and scale new businesses globally based on breakthrough technologies.  I have a team at NovaUCD that looks at the research emerging across the campus (UCD’s research income for 2018/19 was €151 million ) to identify the great inventions, which we then protect (e.g. through patents as needed) and find licensees, in Ireland or internationally, or we build a team around the technology and create a High Potential Spin-out company.

Why did you get involved with Enterprise & Innovation?

It’s very exciting to be there at the birth of an invention and a new company and help shape them to grow up to have global impact.

Spinning out successful companies from university research, Tom Flanagan, NovaUCD

How do you manage to foster this, while also balancing this with the needs of being based within a college setting?

Most universities see innovation as the third mission after learning and research, so there is lots of support for what we do to foster innovation and the commercialisation of research. Academics have the harder challenge.  They have many demands on their intellect and their time, they need to perform world class research and publish in high impact journals but increasingly the best of them can do this and teach their students and be involved in launching great start-ups.

Take for example Dr Eoin O’Cearbhaill, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, a principal investigator in the UCD Centre for Biomedical Engineering, who publishes significant papers, teaches and was involved in launching a start-up company Latch Medical. Latch Medical is now the lead partner in the PharmaLatch project consortium which has just secured DTIF funding.

Four UCD projects received funding, what were they?

Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, TD, together with Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, TD were at NovaUCD recently where they announced the 16 projects which have secured €65 million between them under the second round of the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF).

UCD is a partner in 4 of the 16 funded projects which are:

QCoIr Quantum Computing in Ireland, developing a software platform for multiple qubit technologies, to explore their potential to address challenging problems arising in areas such as financial services, logistics or drug discovery, is to receive €7.3 million over 3-years.

The members of this project consortium are; Professor R. Bogdan Staszewski, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with lead partner, IBM Ireland Ltd and Tyndall National Institute, Maynooth University, Rockley Photonics Ireland; Equal1 Laboratories Ireland, a UCD spin-out headquartered at NovaUCD, and MasterCard Ireland.

Pharma Latch, developing a disruptive microneedle drug delivery platform, is to receive €4.4 million over 3-years.

The members of this project consortium are; Dr Eoin O’Cearbhaill, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering with lead partner, Latch Medical a UCD spin-out headquartered at NovaUCD, and Blueacre Technology and TheraDep.

EyeVU, is developing a miniaturised ‘eyeball’ endoscope camera, which will allow clinicians to see around corners, with unparalleled precision, is to receive €3.2 million over 3-years.

The members of this project consortium are; Dr Jufan Zhang, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering with lead partner, Tympany Medical, and Genetian Services and NCAD.

Transpire, developing a trained AI platform for regulation, that combines human expertise with artificial intelligence to demystify laws and regulations making it easier to do business while protecting consumers, is to receive €2 million over 3-years.

The members of this project consortium are; Dr David Lillis, UCD School of Computer Science and CeADAR, with lead partner, Corlytics, a NovaUCD graduate company, now headquartered at NexusUCD, and Singlepoint Solutions.

How do you help / mentor / support to try and achieve a global impact for these ideas?

The success rate of UCD spin-outs supported through NovaUCD, is much higher than typical start-ups because they are carefully crafted on a wealth of deep intellectual property coming out of years of world-class research.

In addition, we have a range of supports for UCD spin-outs and all our NovaUCD client companies.

For the early-stage start-ups we have a dedicated business and mentor panel network where we match experienced businesspeople with our academic entrepreneurs to mentor them and to help them to accelerate the development of their company.

We have regular dashboard meetings with our companies to see what progress they have made and what they are committing to over the next period and how we can support them.

We also have monthly Founder’s forums where we support them to engage with other successful entrepreneurs and we run workshops and masterclasses to challenge their thinking and give them access to other experts. We also have regular investor meetings where we bring in a panel of investors to challenge and invest in them.

How can people find out more about engaging with NovaUCD?

We are always on the lookout for high growth companies to join our entrepreneurial community. We have recently completed a multi-million euro investment to expand NovaUCD’s capacity by house start-ups by over 50%.

We are actively recruiting young start-ups, less than 3-years old, with groundbreaking technologies and global ambition and who are or want to collaborate with UCD.

Anyone interested in joining our community can find out more and apply via http://www.ucd.ie/innovation/start-ups/locate-at-novaucd/

We are also recruiting for potential CEOs for new ventures and people with a strong track record can apply to join our business mentor panel via https://www.ucd.ie/innovation/start-ups/mentoring-and-investment-opportunities/

In addition, you can follow us on twitter via @NovaUCD or our LinkedIn company page via https://www.linkedin.com/company/novaucd/.

More info about Tom Flanagan 

Tom is the Director for Enterprise and Commercialisation at Ireland’s largest University, University College Dublin, where he leads NovaUCD, Ireland’s premier incubator / accelerator.  NovaUCD has supported over 360 entrepreneurs attract over €760m investments to create thousands of jobs.

Tom is on the Advisory Board of the EIF funded Atlantic Bridge University Fund and has served on the founding boards of several high-tech start-up companies and the DCEB Board approving investments in over 200 start-ups.

Before joining UCD, Tom created Hothouse the Innovation and Tech Transfer Centre at the new Technological University Dublin and was seconded by Knowledge Transfer Ireland to review the National IP Protocol and contribute to the Irish Government’s five-year strategy Innovation 2020.

He started his career as an engineer and rose through the ranks of corporate America to lead a €100m/year telecommunications consultancy and systems integration business for Nortel as Vice President for Canada and Central US.

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