CTVR

Technology Transfer

Creating Commercial Value

Combining the pursuit of long-term, leading-edge challenges with the strategic objective of generating commercial value over a medium-term timeframe, CTVR plays a key role in contributing to the creation of a strong high-tech sector in Ireland.

Critically, our industry links allow us to validate the relevance of our research to ensure that we are working on problems that will yield significant value for our partners and for Ireland. We work closely with industry to define and execute projects, and help our academic partners to identify & progress commercialisable output.

Our strategic plan details clear processes and targets for the creation of IP and its management, protection and exploitation. Together with our colleagues in the Technology Transfer Offices (aka Commercialisation Offices) in CTVR's academic institutions, we ensure through the IP and Consortium Agreements that technical cooperation and technology transfer is managed, protected and exploited to the mutual benefit of all members of CTVR.

Our IP Committee, which includes representation from all constituent elements, is charged with the oversight and implementation of the CTVR IP Agreement which in turn assures the protection of all parties' IP interests. The committee meets on a formal basis once per quarter, and on an as-needed basis to deal with ongoing developments. To date it has reviewed 27 Invention Disclosures, 16 of which have led to patent applications and 8 of which have resulted in patents being awarded. 1 spin-out company has been created and is operating successfully, with 2 more currently in the process of spinning out.

Commercialisation through...... CTVR PARTNERS

Our partnership with Alcatel-Lucent has led to close interaction between CTVR researchers and teams at Bell Labs in Ireland, Murray Hill, Swindon, and Nuremburg. The collaborations have led to a substantial flow of IP, and Bell Labs has established a mentoring process to track the innovations in order to ensure that the ideas reach deployment. Successful examples to date include optimised scheduling methodologies for Alcatel-Lucent’s manufacturing facilities and statistical models to help minimise the costs associated with equipment test.

One of the most notable successes is highlighted below in the context of the Socowave story, where industry-inspired research led to a novel solution, quality publications, a patent, commercialisation funding and eventually to a startup company (Socowave). Socowave now employs ~15 people, and continues to maintain fruitful links with CTVR, in fact it is now a full member of the CTVR consortium.

Commercialisation through...... LICENSING

The licensing of the output of our research is an important mode of commercialisation, particularly with regard to our work on small, ultra-broad bandwidth. The Antenna group at DIT, under the direction of Dr Max Ammann, has created a completely novel way to design and build antennas. The small antennas they produce not only offer the same performance as much larger traditional antennas, they can also be optimised to various shapes to suit the required technology application, and can operate over a wider range of frequencies than any other antenna currently available. The design has been adopted by two Irish companies - Decawave & Taoglas. Both have licensed the technology from DIT so that they can incorporate the antenna into their solutions.

Another notable CTVR success story has been the establishment of Socowave, on the basis of IP licensed from NUI Maynooth. Bell Labs Ireland had initially encouraged research into the elimination of RF feeder cables in basestations. Development of potential solutions quickly led to an invention disclosure followed by a patent application for Antenna Array Calibration (granted in 2009). CTVR was approached by the company founder, who licensed our IP on the calibration of antenna arrays as the basis for his new enterprise. Seed funding was raised, technical staff recruited, and the company is now well established. Socowave is now in fact a CTVR partner.

Commercialisation through...... SPIN-OUTS

Ireland has set ambitious targets to foster the creation of indigenous high-tech industries so the establishment of new companies based on technology developed here is of critical importance.

The Xcelerit Story [Spin-Out Date: October 2010]. Xcelerit is a CTVR spin-out company whose founders are CTVR researchers. They had been conducting research in the field of software radio. Specifically, they were trying to shorten the time-to-result in their experiments by accelerating compute-calculation speeds. As a result of their successful pursuit of this objective, they quickly realised they had achieved a unique and potentially groundbreaking way of optimising the compute power potential of multi-core platforms. They further realised there could be a significant market opportunity for this level of scaled-up performance in compute-intensive application areas, such as banking, oil exploration and the like.....and so, Xcelerit was born.

We are currently working towards the creation of another two companies. The first will be based on a CTVR patent that enables optical networks to reconfigure on nanosecond time scales while allowing higher capacity channels to be supported. The business plan is in development with the company expected to be formed in early 2011.

The second is in the area of cognitive radio/reconfigurable communication systems. The relevant work is now being funded by Enterprise Ireland (the agency which supports commercialisation of research in Ireland) and a business plan is under development. The goal is to spin-out the company by the end of 2011.

Additional Commercial Opportunities

Technology transfer and commercialisation of our research outputs requires a concerted effort by the research staff and our partners.

In addition to the activities mentioned above and elsewhere, CTVR has begun assembling key pieces of IP in Irish universities which have applications in Optical Communications - we expect this to yield both licences and spin-out companies in the years ahead.