HORIZON-EIC-2023-iCapitalPrize - The European Capital of Innovation Awards
EU Prizes: Application form (prizes) The European Capital of Innovation Awards: V1.0 – 08.03.2023
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Be an internationally recognized University-based incubation programme.
IGNITE achieves this mission through a structured programme of workshops, seminars, guest speakers and mentors; access to a shared workspace at UCC’s Western Gateway Building, business networks and small seed funds; and exposure to a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Typically, over 100 business owners and entrepreneurs contribute to the programme as guest speakers, mentors, reviewers and judges every year.
Impacts
The programme has supported 166 founders working on 157 start-up ideas since 2011. Research carried out in late 2022 demonstrated that these founders are actively involved in 86 businesses that have created 369 jobs. IGNITE-supported start- ups have raised over €23M in funding and are estimated to have paid €14M in salaries to staff in the locality in 2022. IGNITE start-ups and founders have been recognized at international, national and regional levels. Most recently: • Apr 2020 – Apisprotect, founded by Dr Fiona Edwards-Murphy, won a Think Global Award from the Think Global Forum. • June 2020 – Dr Mark O’Sullivan, promoter of Neurobell, won Enterprise Ireland’s Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award. • Apr 2021 – Dr Fiona Edwards-Murphy, the founder of ApisProtect, was honoured with inclusion in the 2021 European Forbes Under 30 list of the world’s most impactful community of young entrepreneurs and game-changers. • Jun 2021 – Marion Cantillon, the founder of PitSeal, won the Cruickshank High Achieving Merit Award at the 2021 Enterprise Ireland Student Entrepreneur Awards. • Jun 2022 - Dr Mark O'Sullivan of Neurobell won the top prize in the 2022 Ideate Ireland competition. • Mar 2023 - LegitFit, founded by Ryan O' Neill, Gearoid Collins & Ian O' Sullivan, was named Cork Chamber Emerging Company of the Year. • IGNITE has also supported over 325 students, staff and alumni to identify and develop new start-up ideas through. • START-UP LAB (evening part-time programme) - over 250 students, staff and alumni https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3V3ixFYYLg&t
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IDEAS FOR IMPACT (12-hour Hackathons)
• SDGs Summer School - Developing innovative solutions to SDG challenges this 5-day programme aims to increase awareness of how research can impact the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, while also supporting their endeavours through entrepreneurship, idea generation and innovation. Open to anyone at UCC, but with particular relevance for PhD and master’s by Research students. And many thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students, staff, and alumni of UCC and other third level institutions have been exposed to innovative thinking and inspired by IGNITE’s entrepreneurial start-up founders.
Gateway – University College Cork
Gateway UCC supports researcher led start-ups and spin-out companies that have created more than 450 jobs since 2012. In that time, Gateway UCC supported companies have raised over €50 million of public and private investment, supporting over 70 start-ups. These IP based companies have contributed more than €25 million a year in sal aries to the local economy.
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SPRINT Programme. https://www.ucc.ie/en/gateway/sprintacceleratorprogramme/ Designed to support early-stage start-ups, entrepreneurs and UCC-based researchers, SPRINT focuses on the commercialisation of UCC-generated technologies and routes to market. SPRINT delivers all the information these companies need, giving them the correct information at the correct time, so that they can make better business decisions and avoid the pitfalls many fledgeling companies fall into due to lack of knowledge and experience. This is a part-time programme (0.5 days/week). Accelerator
• The Gateway has Incubation Space. Encompassing c. 1,400 sq m, including 25 incubation units, ‘wet - lab’ space to accommodate biotechnology companies, and hot -desking facilities,
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