Research
Six Queen’s technologies in the running for 25k Awards
A team based at Queen’s won last year’s NISP CONNECT 25k Award for their work in developing a new technique to exploit a class of nanomaterials known as Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). Pictured is Tom Robinson from MOF Technologies with Julie-Ann O’Hare from the main sponsor Bank of Ireland
A tyre pressure monitoring system for smartphones and a process for forming granular fertiliser are just two of the Queen’s technologies shortlisted for the NISP CONNECT 25k Awards.
Six teams from Queen’s are among 10 finalists who will compete for a share of £25k in the annual competition which showcases the innovative research and intellectual property with the most commercial potential from the publicly-funded institutions in Northern Ireland.
Head of Commercial Development at Queen’s, Dr Paul Donachy said: “In working with NISP CONNECT on the 25K Awards, we recognise the value of collaboration in supporting commercialisation of high quality research. As a region, it is clear that we have the capacity to be one of the leading knowledge economies in Europe by 2030. The 25K Awards is a fantastic opportunity to showcase our top technologies that we believe have the potential to become global companies securing high quality, high paid jobs in Northern Ireland.”
Two teams from ECIT, Liopa and Columbus, will compete in the Digital Media/Software category. Liopa is a mobile biometric authentication and speaker verification application – the technology can identify people by assessing the unique biometric characteristics of the user. Columbus uses powerful new mathematics and smartphone technology to create a personal travel assistant helping users monitor progress during their journey.
Queen’s has two teams shortlisted in the clean-tech category – ADFerTech and InkIntelligent. ADFerTech is developing an innovative approach whereby nutrients contained within Anerobic Digestor liquor are concentrated and processed to form granular fertiliser. InkIntelligent, based in the School of Chemistry, has created inks which provide information on the surfaces they come into contact. The first commercial product is a pen with an ink that - in combination with light sufficient to activate the surface - responds to most surfaces that exhibit photocatalytic activity.
ProAx-SIS (Protease Active Site Solutions), which is based on years of research in the School of Pharmacy, has been shortlisted in the Bio-tech category. The company has developed small molecule, peptide-based inhibitors (Protease-Tags), which serve both as a means to trap active proteases and to provide a visual readout of their presence in biological samples, with applications to protease biomarker identification.
XpressLF, which is developing a tyre pressure monitoring system for smartphones, has been shortlisted in the Hi-tech category.
The final takes place in Titanic Belfast on 26 September 2013.
