Athlone company shortlisted for European award

OxyMem (www.oxymem.com), a University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out company based in Athlone, is one of just nine companies established by academic entrepreneurs, to be shortlisted for the sixth annual Academic Enterprise Awards. The Academic Enterprise Awards are the only pan-European awards dedicated to spin-out companies emerging from universities and public research institutes.

OxyMem is the sole Irish spin-out short-listed for the awards, which are run by Science|Business which is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

OxyMem was co-founded in 2013 by academic entrepreneurs Professor Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron as spin-out from UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering.

The company has developed a breakthrough technology for wastewater aeration. For 100 years the cornerstone of global wastewater treatment has been ‘forced’ or ‘bubble’ aeration. OxyMem’s solution does not rely on this highly inefficient method, instead it uses gas permeable membranes capable of delivering Oxygen directly to the bacteria, resulting in a four-fold energy saving with more compact, lower cost infrastructure.

OxyMem currently employs 20 people and is in the process of closing a funding round and plans to increase staff numbers to 35 within the next year.
In addition to OxyMem, spin-out companies established by academic entrepreneurs from, Denmark’s Aarhus University (1); Germany’s Technische Universität Berlin (3) and Technische Universität München (1); Switzerland’s ETH Zurich/University of Zurich (1) and the UK’s University of Edinburgh (1) and Oxford University (1), have been shortlisted in one of 3 award categories; ICT, Green and Life Sciences.

OxyMem has been shortlisted in the Green Award category. Professor Eoin Casey, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering said: “It is a great honour for OxyMem to be shortlisted for the prestigious Academic Enterprise Awards. I am delighted that the technology, which has resulted from research performed over the last decade in my laboratory, together with Dr Eoin Syron, and which has been funded by Enterprise Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland, has now been translated into a commercial company with the potential to have a significant impact on the global wastewater treatment industry”.

Brendan Cremen, UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation congratulated OxyMem on being shortlisted for the only pan-European awards dedicated to recognising academic entrepreneurs who are spinning-out companies to commercialise outputs emerging from research taking place in universities and public research institutes.

“Being 1 of only 9 spin-outs from across Europe shortlisted for these Awards, OxyMem is highlighting the quality of the spin-out companies emerging from University College Dublin and exemplifies the hard work and dedication of our research community in commercialising their research outputs with the support of our technology transfer and enterprise development team at NovaUCD,” he concluded.

Earlier this year OxyMem, an Enterprise Ireland client company, won the overall ‘Innovation of the Year’ Award at the 2014 Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation Awards. Last month the company won the first Water Innovation SME Award in Europe for Membrane Technologies.

The winners of the 2014 Academic Enterprise Awards will be selected by the Science|Business Innovation Board and will be announced during the upcoming Innovation Connection conference. This conference will be held on October 7 2014 at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.