SOME 90 new jobs will be created by emerging Irish companies at a new €2 million incubation business centre at University College Cork, Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe said yesterday when officially opening the centre.
The gateway UCC centre has been established to encourage the commercialisation and spin-out of advance research by UCC’s academic community to create commercially viable companies.
The centre, which has been developed with funding from UCC and Enterprise Ireland, will support the launch of new and knowledge-intensive businesses at a highly-modern facility on campus in the new Gateway Building on the Western Road in Cork.
Mr O’Keeffe said the new centre had the capacity to support 15 knowledge-intensive start-ups at any one time, and formed a key element of UCC’s development plan to translate world-class research into new companies which would create export-driven jobs.
He said the facility, which was managed by UCC’s office of technology transfer, would also allow for the growth of “spin-ins” from other research centres as well as promoting academic partnerships with industry.
UCC president Dr Michael Murphy said gatewayUCC was uniquely placed to harness the world-class research and multi-disciplinary capabilities of UCC and would prove a dynamic catalyst for innovation in research areas such as ICT, food, life sciences and pharmaceuticals.
He said the centre aimed to create competitive advantages for its client companies as they come to market, while the demonstration of tangible outputs for the major investments made in research was very important.
“We are achieving this in the formation of companies which will go on collectively to create hundreds of jobs, and this will make a significant contribution to Ireland’s economic competitiveness in the future,” said Dr Murphy.
To mark yesterday’s opening of gatewayUCC, UCC also announced the launch of a spin-out firm, 3PRO EnergyWatch, which has developed a green IT software solution that automates the shutdown and hibernation of a company’s computer systems.
