News

BIG IDEAS. DCU wins two out of three Enterprise Ireland awards

20 October 2010

Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan, TD, today presented two DCU companies with Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Awards. The event was part of the Big Ideas Showcase, which is an annual event, aimed at allowing 18 researchers to pitch "exciting" new technologies to more than 200 potential investors and partners. The event will see more than 100 one-to-one meetings between the inventors and the potential investors to explore the options to either licence these new technologies or use them as the basis to form new companies in the energy, life sciences, medical engineering and IT sectors.

Minister Lenihan said, "Over the past decade the Government and Enterprise Ireland have continued to increase investment and support for nurturing the commercial potential of research and IP developed in Ireland's higher education institutions. This investment is paying off. During this period over 900 researchers in higher education institutes have received commercialisation funding to prove and develop the commercial potential of their research. To date, over 140 new companies have been formed from this research, and together these companies have a turnover of over €160 million and employ over 1000 people.

The first award went to DCU and Invent for their work in facilitating the DCU spin-out company Astryne Limited, which will manufacture liquid filters for VARs. The company had its origins in a research technology proposal from two DCU research centres, NCSR and BDI

The second winner, the Centre for Digital Video Processing (CDVP) partnered 'Fairview Analytics' to commercialise their digital processing technology, InSPeCT, for use in vehicle traffic analysis at seaport, land border crossings and Urban Congestion Zones. The research grew out of Enterprise Ireland-funded research which looked at advanced digital processing techniques of streamed media content.

At the 2008 Big Ideas event the team were linked with entrepreneur Pat Flynn, who recognised the commercial potential of the research. Pat Flynn and the DCU team worked collaboratively developing a commercial concept for vehicle traffic analysis in seaports and land border crossings.

Pat’s company Fairview Analytics has now licensed the technology from DCU. Through an Innovation Partnership they have developed and deployed the InSPeCT Sea Port Container Traffic system and continue to collaborate with DCU on its development.

The InSPeCT System uses CCTV cameras and vehicle monitoring cameras to record and analyse vehicle traffic that pass through the sea / land border crossings and Urban congestion Zones. This vehicle information then enables Seaports / Customs / Urban authorities to Automate Access or Enforce Vehicle Access Restrictions.

The system is currently being further developed by DCU and is deployed at Rosslare Europort in co-operation with Iarnrod Eireann to monitor truck and container traffic entering and leaving the seaport. The system is also being marketed and sold to seaports in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Further details on InSPeCT

InSPeCT, is a collaboration between researchers in CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies and Irish company Fairview Analytics, a leading supplier of advanced software solutions that monitor vehicle and container traffic. The 12 month project that begun in July 2009 was funded by Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnership programme.

The InSPeCT (Integrated Surveillance for Port Container Traffic) system analyses video from CCTV and Vehicle Monitoring cameras and brings a new dimension of intelligence to recordings and analysis of vehicle traffic that passes through border crossings and seaports. InSPeCT automatically reads and records the container number and vehicle number plate and has integrated video playback. InSPeCT utilizes advanced query and search techniques for the efficient retrieval of information.

“From the start, the system has been designed to cater to the specific needs of port and border officials, providing them with search functionality simply not available in other systems”, said Dr David Sadlier, a CLARITY researcher based in Dublin City University and Technical Manager of the InSPeCT project. “In addition to standard automatic number plate and container number recognition, the system supports search by other data extracted directly from the images and video using clever image processing”, he goes on to say.

The Innovation Partnership Programme encourages Irish based companies to work with Irish colleges to access their expertise and resources to develop new and improved products, processes, services, and generate new knowledge and know-how.

“This collaboration is an excellent example of how the Innovation Partnership programme can leverage home grown research expertise to effectively engage with high potential Irish SMEs”, said Professor Noel O’Connor, Principal Investigator of the InSPeCT project, who also leads a Research Strand in CLARITY, a partnership between University College Dublin, Dublin City University and Tyndall National Institute (TNI) Cork, funded by Science Foundation Ireland.

Pat Flynn, CEO of Fairview Analytics added, “It shows how investment in R&D can help Irish industry grow and compete on a world stage, leading to novel industry offerings and ultimately new job creation.”

A new drive focused on matching research with investment has been launched and is targeting turning research work into future jobs.

Further details Astryne Limited, spin out from DCU

Astryne Limited is a filter manufacturer producing and developing high performance regenerative micro-filters and solutions. This start-up company is led by Wolfgang Laub and Colm McMahon and is based in Balbriggan. Wolfgang has an engineering background and many years experience in the filtration business. Colm has a background in process engineering at Intel and micro-fluidic processing at DCU.


The company have developed a new technology to produce a new type of regenerative filters on CD production lines resulting in a huge range of applications:


· Metal machining, especially wire-EDM where a clear gap in the market exists

· Drinking water, especially pre-filtration for reverse osmosis systems

· Power plants, especially condensed turbine-water

· Ballast water (ships)

· Industrial washing machine effluent (high growth market)

· Food & Drug - significant range of applications from juice to beer

· Semiconductor industries

· Galvanic industries etc.

· Pharma / Medical

Astryne’s filters are extremely robust, have very low energy consumption, and are easily maintained, making them highly competitive in a market place where many current filtration products have very high operating costs. Across industry, there is a strong trend towards increased productivity and environmentally friendly operations and a shift away from disposal of materials. Automatic, fully regenerative filters represent the key technology enabling this, and Astryne’s products directly address this market need.