University College Dublin (UCD) has announced that it is to expand its on campus facility to house start-up companies by over 50% with a €6.5 million development project.

The project to renovate and extend the east courtyard of NovaUCD, the University’s Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs, is expected to be completed this Summer.

NovaUCD (www.novaucd.ie) based on UCD’s Belfield campus, officially opened in October 2003 and is currently home to over 25 start-up companies. These companies have either spun-out of UCD research programmes or have spun-in to locate at NovaUCD in order to collaborate with the University.

Tom Flanagan, UCD’s Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation said, “The NovaUCD facility has been running at full capacity for several years now. There is an ongoing and significant demand from ambitious entrepreneurs who want to locate their start-ups at NovaUCD to leverage our ecosystem of experienced mentors, founders, alumni, investors and sponsors who can help them grow their businesses globally. By joining the NovaUCD community these start-ups can also take advantage of access to our world-class researchers, facilities and talent across the UCD campus.”

“The development of the east courtyard will enable us to increase our capacity by over 50% and when completed NovaUCD will be able to accommodate up to 450 people.”

NovaUCD is located in a mid-18^th century house, formerly known as Merville House. It currently comprises of a restored main building along with the restoration and extension of the west courtyard. The current expansion will see the renovation and extension of a second, or east, courtyard.

NovaUCD currently has 1,425m² of licensable space in a total of 40 units, labs and co-working space. The newly developed courtyard will result in 800m² of additional licensable space, and will include a total of 23 business units, labs and co-working space.

The internal courtyard area will be designed as a new meeting and social space for client companies.

Since 2003, UCD has supported over 225 companies through NovaUCD. Some of the best known start-ups include UCD spin-out companies; ChangingWorlds, BiancaMed, Equinome and Logentries and spin-in companies; EnBIO and Genomics Medicine Ireland.

Among the companies currently located at NovaUCD are; Carrick Therapeutics, OncoMark and THEYA Healthcare.

Six private sector sponsors; AIB, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers and Xilinx contributed 75% of the €10 million raised to develop the first two phases of NovaUCD, with the balance of funds provided by Enterprise Ireland and UCD.

The architects for this current project are Kavanagh Tuite Architects, who were architects for the original design of the NovaUCD facility.