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UCC business incubation programme awarded €1M by Higher Education Authority
IGNITE, the award-winning business incubation programme run by University College Cork (UCC) is among five Irish higher education institution initiatives to have been allocated a performance funding award of €1M, in recognition of the programme’s exemplary performance in working towards the achievement of national strategy and policy priorities.
Founded in 2011, IGNITE is a joint initiative by Cork City Council, Cork County Council, the Local Enterprise Offices of Cork City, South Cork and North & West Cork and University College Cork to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise creation. Led by Programme Director Eamon Curtin, IGNITE has worked with almost 250 founders working on close to 200 start-up ideas who have gone on to launch companies such as AnaBio Technologies, Inaza, LegitFit, Neurobell, Recruitroo, TheWellSchoolsNetwork and TrustAp. The programme is open to all recent graduates from all third level institutions in Ireland who have the passion and ambition to work full-time on a scalable start-up idea with potential for commercial or social impact. IGNITE is a pillar of the New Ventures programme in UCC’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.
The performance funding was awarded by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) through the evaluation of Impact Assessment Case Studies, which were submitted by higher education institutions (HEIs) to the HEA earlier this year. Submissions were evaluated by an independent expert panel, with the IGNITE programme emerging as one of the five victorious submissions.
Commenting on the awards, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless, T.D. stated: “I would like to congratulate the successful institutions on their awards. The initiatives recognised today are impressively wide ranging — they rethink inclusive digital education, tackle disadvantage through equitable access to work experience, foster entrepreneurship and support start-ups, promote the Sustainable Development Goals, inspire and train future engineers and scientists, and take Ireland into the space age. Together they demonstrate the significant and valuable impact that our higher education and research system has on all aspects of our economy, environment and society.”
Dr. Sally Cudmore, Director of UCC Innovation said: “Congratulations to Eamon and the IGNITE team on this performance funding award of €1M from the HEA. This award will further enable our talented entrepreneur community to avail of the support and skills they require to build businesses that are both impactful and commercially viable ventures, improving lives and creating real-world impact. The funding will be invested in projects across campus, the most significant of which will be development of Start-Up Central, a vibrant innovation hub in a central campus location”.
Eamon Curtin, Programme Director of IGNITE said: “We are proud at IGNITE to support talented founders in developing their innovative business ideas into scalable and sustainable start-ups that deliver real social and economic value. This funding award is testament to not only to the great work carried out by our community of entrepreneurs, but also to the support provided to us by the Local Enterprise Offices, Cork County Council, Cork City Council and Bank of Ireland, without whom the programme would not be possible.”