Congratulations to Dr Harriët Schellekens awarded the APC Industry & Entrepreneurship Award 2021/2022

18 Nov 2022

Congratulations to Dr Harriët Schellekens Principal Investigator and Lecturer in the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience who has been awarded the APC Industry & Entrepreneurship Award 2021/2022 at the annual APC Symposium 2022, held on 7^th of October 2022 in the Devere Hall, University College Cork.

Dr Schellekens was presented with the award in recognition of her recent and ongoing success in establishing many wholly funded APC-Industry collaborations, including a recent project with Tate & Lyle, investigating the metabolic pathways that may explain functional effects of prebiotics across the gut-brain axis, and the synbiotic potential of fibres and probiotic strains.  (awarded €393,472).

Receiving her award Dr Schellekens said ‘she is very honoured to receive the APC Industry & Entrepreneurship award’, adding that ‘the award recognises the importance of collaborative work between the academic research teams and industry’ and that ‘this award will also encourage other projects to benefit from such collaboration’.

 Harriet has been very active in establishing industry collaborations and APC-industry wholly funded projects, amassing together >€2,000,000 for 

for the brain-gut-microbiota axis theme in APC Microbiome Ireland. She has taken a leadership role and driven multiple APC-industry projects both scientifically and operationally, including very successful and long-standing collaboration projects with CREMO and Pharmavite Fonterra, and recently Health and Happiness (H&H) Research Limited Group, with collaborators Professor John F. Cryan, Professor Gerard Clarke, Dr Niall Hyland, and Dr Siobhain O’Mahony. 

Dr Schellekens has contributed to other APC-industry projects, including PepsiCo and 4DPharma. She is an inventor on a patent (filed and pending, EP17187989.3) entitled: “Bifidobacterium longum APC1472 for treating obesity and weight management”, which is evidence of the creative endeavour /development of novel technologies.

She has taken part in the SPRINT Accelerator Programme, KTI Lean Start-up Programme, Board excellence UCC Spinout Best Practices workshop, and I-CORPS@SFI Academy, and has developed a mechanistic screening platform for the identification and characterization of the most promising bacterial strains for metabolic and mental health with high potential for commercialisation.

Links

https://twitter.com/Pharmabiotic/status/1578488054217846786?s=20&t=qRMEdRliMPThw8bilc3azg

• Dr Harriët Schellekens’ PROTECT project awarded BINC funding
• Dr Harriët Schellekens embraces remote conferencing and hybrid work opportunities to communicate research findings
• Dr Harriët Schellekens invited speaker at Harvard Medical School Interdisciplinary Oxytocin Research Initiative
• Dr Harriët Schellekens' research paper features in the New York Post, Fox News and Irish Times

News item and photos B.Riedewald