Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has joined forces with DCU Ryan Academy to provide entrepreneurship training for post-doctoral researchers so they can learn the business essentials when pitching their ideas to secure investment.
Sixteen researchers from research centres in universities across Ireland are engaged in the three-month programme at DCU Ryan Academy, which will culminate in Demo Day in May, whereby they will pitch their ideas to a selected panel that includes a representative from the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) in Silicon Valley.
The eventual winner will then head to Silicon Valley for a week-long trip, hosted by ITLG, to meet venture capitalists and leading technology companies.
This collaboration is part of SFI’s TIDA (Technology Innovation Development Award) 2010 programme. SFI is working in partnership with Enterprise Ireland on TIDA to realise a greater economic impact from State investment in oriented basic research.
The key objective is that successful TIDA awardees will start to develop a base of commercially relevant, applied research skills that can then be built on with Enterprise Ireland support in order to produce tangible commercial outputs.
“These modules in the SFI programme are delivered by practitioners in the various fields that are vital to an entrepreneurial endeavour,” said Gordon McConnell, deputy-CEO of the Ryan Academy and director of the SFI programme. “The objective is to give the researchers a real idea of what they need to do to start a technology company tomorrow,” he added.
