Building relationships with indigenous Irish industry is a key objective for DCU and through Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnerships scheme, smaller Irish companies are able to engage in applied research which can enhance their products and processes. In this way emerging technologies are licensed to indigenous companies and brought to market based on clear product and market needs defined by the industrial partners.

Examples of Current DCU Innovation Partnerships

Murco Ltd.
Murco is a  Dun Laoghaire based company specialising in the manufacture and supply of Gas Monitoring equipment. This equipment monitors combustible and toxic gases in industrial and commercial buildings and environmentally harmful leaks from refrigeration and air conditioning equipment in hotels and industrial locations.
Murco has been working with DCU for some time and their interest is mainly in electronic interfaces and sensor design. They have recently sought assistance from DCU in designing;

• a wireless version of their equipments (battery powered and RF communications) to eliminate wiring installation costs
• an infrared sensor for refrigerant gases
• an ammonia sensor

This work is partly funded by Enterprise Ireland under their Innovation Partnership scheme.
http://www.murco.ie/

EpiSensor Ltd.
EpiSensor is a Limerick based company that develops and sells products for energy consumption monitoring, street light control, water quality monitoring and building climate control. It has special expertise in developing ZigBee wireless sensor networks and transmitting data over mobile phone networks. EpiSensor and DCU are developing an autonomous water quality monitoring system that uses phosphate sensor technology developed by DCU. This work is being carried out under the EI Innovation Partnership scheme.
http://www.episensor.com/

Enfer Group
There is an urgent worldwide need for improved diagnostic assays that can rapidly detect specific microbial pathogens of relevance to animal healthcare and veterinary research. Livestock diseases not only cause major economic losses, but zoonotic diseases can also be transmitted to humans either directly or through the food chain. This DCU - Enfer collaboration aims to develop a suite of novel assays that will accelerate and improve the detection of selected bovine microbial pathogens and other species-specific markers.
http://www.enfergroup.com/

Examples of large scale academic-industry collaborations at DCU

Centre for Next Generation Localisation
Language barriers constitute a formidable obstacle to the free flow of information, products and services in an increasingly globalised economy and information society. “Localisation” refers to the process of adapting digital content to culture, locale and linguistic environments at high quality and speed. Localisation is a key enabling, value-adding, multiplier component of the global software and content distribution industry. Localisation seeks to overcome language barriers.
The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is a dynamic Academic-Industry partnership with over 100 researchers developing novel technologies addressing the key localisation challenges of volume, access and personalisation. The objective is to produce substantial advances in the basic and applied research underpinning the design, implementation and evaluation of the blueprints for the Next Generation Localisation Factory.
Industrial partners include major multinational corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Symantec, Dai Nippon Printing (Japan), Idiom as well as a number of Irish SME's: Alchemy, Speechstorm, Traslan and Vistatec.

Biomedical Diagnostics Institute
DCU’s commitment towards successfully translating research results into real society benefits is well illustrated by recent innovative research programmes in the nationally important biopharma and health areas. These initiatives taken together illustrate DCU’s commitment to establishing strong industrial partnerships as a strategic approach to developing research teams working at the cutting-edge of commercially significant research.
A primary example is the establishment of the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute (BDI) at DCU which exemplifies university-industry interaction. BDI is developing next-generation, self-diagnostic devices to provide early warning of illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, through analysis of disease related molecules in blood, saliva or breath. It is supported by an SFI grant of €16.5m under its CSET programme– the largest such funding ever granted in this kind of project. In addition six industrial partners (Inverness Medical Innovations, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Enfer, Hospira, Analog Devices and Amic) are investing a further €6m. The research team also includes researchers  from the Royal College of Surgeons, NUI Galway and University College Cork.

BMS Centre for Bioanalytical Science
A further example of DCU’s engagement with a leading biopharmaceutical company is a €15m IDA and SFI backed investment to establish a groundbreaking collaboration, the BMS Centre for Bioanalytical Science (CBAS), between DCU, NUI Galway and the pharmaceutical multinational Bristol-Myers Squibb. New York based Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global manufacturer of pharmaceutical and related health care products. The project is significant not only in its ambition to develop new  technologies and methods for BMS biopharmaceutical products and processes that could generate annual savings of €40m - €70m in a medium to large biopharma production line but it was the first of its kind within the Irish university sector to involve large-scale support from IDA Ireland. Both the BMS and BDI largescale programmes proactively support the co-location of industrial partner researchers to maximize both the scientific collaboration and knowledge transfer.