Enterprise Ireland today holds its first commercialisation conference with the aim of bringing academia and business together to encourage the creation of new companies.
The state agency is hoping to put researchers from third level institutions in touch with with people in suitable businesses about realising their ideas.
The commercialisation of academic research is not new to Enterprise Ireland, but holding an event where the researchers, the venture capitalists with the finance and the people with the business know-how, all can get together is new.
Dr Paul Roben, EI's commercialisation director, said that over the last number of years the number of start-ups is increasing as a result of this activity, with seven new companies set up last year and between 10 - 12 expected this year.
He said EI puts around €30m into developing technologies within the universities, and provides an additional €175m to Venture Capitalists, which allows them to leverage, or borrow, a further €500m to invest in these start-ups.
He said Ireland needs to build on current research strengths, for example in life sciences such as diagnostics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and food technologies.
