Campus News

UCD: TOP START-UPS HUB

UCD’s success as a talent incubator has been highlighted by data firm PitchBook’s latest ranking of global universities based on their start-up founder count. UCD places in fifth position in Europe and is the only Irish university to make it into the top 100 globally. 189 undergraduates from UCD went on to found companies, raising a total capital of $2.6bn.

Among the founders cited by PitchBook were clinical research psychologist and health tech visionary, Dr Alison Darcy, who founded mental health tech start-up Woebot in 2017 and raised nearly $140m. Darcy was early to recognise the potential of AI in digital mental healthcare and was named to the prestigious 2023 TIME100 AI list of influential individuals advancing conversations about how AI is reshaping the world.

PitchBook also namechecked Barry Canton, the co-founder of US-based biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, which raised nearly $800m before going public, and Oblivious, founded by Robert Pisarczyk and Jack Fitzsimons, a cybersecurity start-up headquartered at NovaUCD, which recently raised €5.35m.

Another UCD spin-out, Nanobox, co-founded by John Favier, has announced first round funding of €900,000 from a consortium of Irish venture capital investors, including the Yield Lab, DeepIE Ventures and Growing Capital. Nanobox has developed patented technology that adds gases to water using nanobubbles. The Nanobox technology generates nanobubbles using a low-voltage electric field with no moving parts requiring less energy than it takes to power a lightbulb. Competing methods consume much more power.

At the inaugural Public Sector Digital Transformation Awards, the AI Innovation of the Year Award went to UCD and AI_PREMie, led by Professor Patricia Maguire, which uses AI to disrupt diagnostic practices in preeclampsia and save the lives of mothers and their newborn babies.

SiriusXT, an Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up headquartered in Dublin, co-founded by Tony McEnroe, Dr Fergal O’Reilly, Dr Kenneth Fahy and Dr Paul Sheridan as a UCD spin-out company, has announced the world’s first commercial deployment of its novel table-top soft X-ray microscope, the SXT-100, at the UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research.

EIRSAT-1

Ireland successfully launched its first ever satellite, the EIRSAT-1, built and designed by UCD Physics and Engineering students, into space in December 2023. To mark this momentous achievement, a poem entitled ‘All Ways Home’, written by pupils from 12 DEIS schools around Ireland in collaboration with UCD poets, is engraved on the outer cover of the antenna module. www.eirsat1.ie

UCD Climbs in International Rankings

UCD is now ranked first in Ireland for Sustainability and Employment Outcomes in the QS European University Rankings. UCD has also seen its overall position in the European rankings improve sharply, rising 20 places since the inaugural rankings were released last year, and is now ranked 51 in Europe, up from 71.

UCD ranks first in Ireland, 24th in Europe and 50th globally in the QS Sustainability Rankings 2024. UCD has also risen 45 places to 126 in the overall QS World University Rankings.

UCD Smurfit Executive Development remains one of the top education destinations for executives as it ranks in the global top 50 in both Custom Executive Education (33rd) and Open Enrolment (46th) in the latest Financial Times’ report. Within the ranking criteria the School was listed 4th globally for Growth and 27th for Programme Design. Client Satisfaction was the highest in Ireland and ranked 23rd globally. UCD Smurfit Executive Development is a member of UNICON, an invitation-only alliance of the world’s leading university-based executive education providers and holds the ‘triple crown’ of accreditation from three centres of business and academic excellence – EQUIS, AACSB and AMBA.

UCD ONE HEALTH CENTRE

UCD has launched a new centre dedicated to solving global health challenges by recognising the interconnection between and threats facing people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.

Collaborating across a variety of sectors including government, academia, international organisations, civil society, and the private sector, the UCD One Health Centre aims to research and build awareness to protect human wellbeing and health from threats such as pandemics, obesity and antibiotic resistance.

The World Health Organisation sees UCD as a front runner and part of the technical advisory group on One Health with the Centre poised to become a national and global leader in developing and implementing One Health strategies. Currently, the UCD One Health Centre is working with the WHO on a mentorship programme, contributing to a public health workshop for doctors in Ukraine, and supporting the Environmental Health Association of Ireland conference on One Health.

James Joyce Library Refurbishment

The refurbishment of Level 3 of the James Joyce Library (JJL) is complete. The JJL now offers 535 formal and informal student learning spaces in a contemporary, light-filled setting. Alongside new learning spaces, enhanced welfare facilities and water stations, the JJL now has a range of inclusive spaces and rooms designed to enhance the learning experience of all students.

UCD ANNIVERSARIES

Conway 20th Anniversary

In October, UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research marked 20 years at the leading edge of research, innovation and impact. Over 500 alumni, staff, students and friends gathered to celebrate.

Ireland’s leading biomedical research institute, Conway focuses on high-quality ‘blue skies’ innovative and interdisciplinary research in the biosciences, and on developing novel therapies for chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity as well as neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, depression, and autism.

Attending the anniversary event to mark the occasion were Maureen and Hilary Daly, the daughter and granddaughter of the late Professor E.J. Conway, FRS, UCD’s first Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, after whom the Institute is named.

The prestigious Conway Festival Gold Medal for outstanding research was presented to doctoral candidate Ciara Walsh for her work on immunomodulatory hydrogels in spinal cord injury.

Sutherland 10th Anniversary

UCD Sutherland School of Law marked its tenth year with the annual John M. Kelly Memorial Lecture and a special celebration of this milestone. Judge Suzanne Kingston of the General Court of the European Union, a faculty member since 2007, delivered the 2024 Lecture: ‘On the Role of Constitutional Identity: Teach Solais or Will-o’- the-Wisp?’. Guests included the Chief Justice, the Attorney General, members of the judiciary and the legal profession, as well as staff and students.

NovaUCD 20th anniversary

NovaUCD has been named one of Europe’s leading start-up hubs by the Financial Times. Ranked at 81, NovaUCD is one of only two start-up hubs in Ireland to be included in the inaugural Europe’s Leading Start-Up Hubs special report, and is the only Irish university-based hub among the rankings. In the 20 years since its establishment, NovaUCD has assisted more than 550 companies and its business community has raised more than €1.3bn in equity funding.

UCD Trapdoor Black Box Theatre

A disused performance space once home to Dramsoc has been transformed into a state-of-the art Black Box theatre. The €2.5m refurbishment has turned the former UCD Dramsoc theatre in the Newman Building into Trapdoor, a new home for student creativity, production and performance.

From the 1970s to 2012, the UCD Dramsoc theatre fostered the talent of some of Ireland’s most distinguished writers, playwrights, and theatre and film directors including Frank McGuinness, Neil Jordan, Consolata Boyle, Marina Carr and Conor McPherson. Former members of UCD Dramsoc include Brenda Fricker, Jim Sheridan, Rosaleen Linehan and Dermot Morgan.

Watch the transformation here.

PRESIDENT’S AWARDS

The President has recognised the service to UCD campus life of 20 students, presenting them with the President’s Award at a ceremony in O’Reilly Hall. The Award is given to those who have excelled in extracurricular activities of a kind that make UCD an exciting, interesting, dynamic, and humane place to live, study and work. Recipients are nominated by their peers and are actively engaged in service to UCD societies, clubs, the Students’ Union, or student support services, or competitive activity in intervarsity events.

UCD in the Community – Student Volunteer Awards

UCD students involved in volunteering activities have had their outstanding contributions recognised at the UCD in the Community Volunteering Awards. The 61 2023 award recipients run UCD sports clubs, societies, class rep and peer mentorship programmes, and actively contributed to UCD’s ‘Rising to the Future’ strategy through their external volunteering.

Ulysses Medal awarded to Professor Geoffrey Hinton

The UCD Ulysses Medal, the highest honour the University can bestow, has been awarded to one of the most influential AI researchers of the past 50 years, Professor Geoffrey Hinton, known as the ‘Godfather of AI’.

The Ulysses Medal is a symbol of outstanding achievement and contribution to the academic world, awarded annually to individuals whose work has made a profound impact on society. Previous recipients include former US President Bill Clinton, Professor Noam Chomsky, novelist Frank McGuinness, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, and former Irish President Mary McAleese.

Professor Hinton has been at the forefront of AI research for decades. The great-great-grandson of logician George Boole whose work, undertaken in Ireland, underpins the foundations of modern computer science, Professor Hinton received his BA in Experimental Psychology from Cambridge in 1970 and his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh in 1978. His pioneering work in deep learning and neural networks has laid the foundation for revolutionary advancements in AI applications, from image recognition to natural language processing. He has also played a crucial role in mentoring and educating the next generation of AI researchers.

Honorary Doctorate for Dr Mae Jemison

UCD has awarded an honorary degree to Dr Mae Jemison – the first black woman in space – who embodies the University’s Ad Astra (‘to the stars’) motto through her work as an innovator, creative researcher and scientist motivated by social activism. Part of the Space Shuttle Endeavour mission in 1992, Dr Mae, as she is known, served six years as a NASA astronaut and was the first woman of colour to go into space during a joint mission with the Japanese space agency. Dr Mae is the newest member of UCD’s Inclusive Design Research Centre, and co-Principal Investigator of its project: IMAGINALS.

Among others, UCD has also awarded honorary doctorates to writer and patient advocate, Orla Tinsley, Dr Rory O’Donnell of the National Economic and Social Council, and Ambassador Anne Anderson, Ireland’s first female Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to the European Union; the first female Ambassador to France and Monaco; and the first woman to represent Ireland as Ambassador to the United States.