THE INNOVATION CENTRE at University College Dublin believes the companies based there will more than double their workforces over the next two years – creating 300 highly-skilled jobs.

NovaUCD houses both ‘spin-out’ companies which try to commercialise the research of the university’s academics, as well as ‘spin-in’ companies who purposely set up on campus in order to gain better access to university research expertise.

The expectation for the new jobs is based on the current workforces at the centre – 205 people already work at the 37 companies there.

Those companies had raised a combined €40 million in equity investments to date, and created 80 jobs last year.

Professor Peter Clinch, UCD’s vice-president for innovation, said the companies based in NovaUCD “were established to translate innovative ideas into value-added products and services, including companies which are commercialising UCD research outputs.

“The development and growth of such high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies is of critical importance for Ireland’s economic recovery.”

NovaUCD itself is funded through a public-private partnership that includes investment from UCD itself as well as AIB, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Arthur Cox, Ericsson, Xilinx and Goodbody Stockbrokers.

Companies based there include HeyStaks, a service which brings social input into web search results, Tethras which helps app developers offer localised features depending on a user’s location, and Equinome which offers commercial equite genetics services to identify the most promising racehorses.

Others include Wattics, a spin-out company which hopes to offer ‘smart metering’ energy services for businesses, and RendezVu, which operates online learning platforms to teach the English language.