NovaUCD Innovation Awards 2022
11th April 2022
TestReach founders were among the winners of this year’s NovaUCD Innovation Awards which were held at the end of March.
A total of 8 Awards, including the main 2022 NovaUCD Innovation Award, were presented by Professor Barbara Dooley, Acting UCD Registrar and Deputy President during an event held in the UCD University Club.
Among this year’s awardees were Sheena Bailey and Louella Morton, founders of TestReach who were the recipients of the 2022 NovaUCD Founder of the Year Award.
TestReach, headquartered at NexusUCD, provides a cloud-based online assessment solution that enables end-to-end management of exam authoring, test assembly, exam delivery, marking, moderation and reporting. TestReach covers a wide range of question types and delivery options, including live remote invigilation for formal exams.
Covid-19 drove a huge increase in demand for TestReach from around the world, which necessitated the company scaling rapidly in terms of number of employees and operational capacity. In the last year TestReach sustained revenue growth of 60%; added a further 40 new clients, such as the Institute of Banking, the Insurance Institute of Ireland, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and multiple European agencies; grew staff numbers by 50% and now employs a team of over 100 people.
The company’s expansion is continuing and TestReach plans to add 30 additional employees in the coming year.
Louella Morton said, “We are absolutely delighted to have won this award, which recognises the great achievement of everyone at TestReach, who worked tirelessly in very exceptional circumstances. There is huge momentum within the company and we look forward to continued growth throughout 2022 and beyond.”
Sheena Bailey added, “It is wonderful to win this award as two female co-founders of a high-growth tech company. I’d like to thank the TestReach team who have been such a key part of the journey, and those at NovaUCD for their support over the last number of years. We have always had great ambitions for TestReach, and it is really fantastic to see those ambitions being realised.”
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Consultancy of the Year Award went to Dr Sarah Cotterill, UCD School of Civil Engineering and UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research, for a consultancy study entitled ‘A Framework for Improving Domestic Water Conservation in Ireland’, commissioned by An Fóram Uisce (the Water Forum) through ConsultUCD.
A key finding of the study was that almost a fifth of the energy used in Irish homes is used for heating water, and therefore a relatively small reduction in household water use (of say 20%) in all homes in Ireland, could lead to a significant reduction (hundreds of thousands of tonnes) of greenhouse gas emissions a year.
Pictured at University College Dublin is Dr Sarah Cotterill, UCD School of Civil Engineering and UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research, recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Consultancy of the Year Award. Photograph Nick Bradshaw
Dr Sarah Cotterill said, “I am delighted to receive this Award in recognition of the work carried out for An Fóram Uisce, with support from a collaborator at the University of Exeter, Dr Peter Melville-Shreeve, and with the support of ConsultUCD.”
“Ireland is perceived to be a ‘wet’ country but resource availability varies across the country. I hope the findings from this work can progress to the next level to bring about the behavioural, technological and regulatory change necessary to manage our most vital resource, water, more sustainably.
Eight Awards in total!
The recipient of 2022 NovaUCD Innovation Award is Professor Dominic Zerulla, UCD School of Physics.
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Invention of the Year Award is Dr John McCallig, UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business and the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Spin-out of the Year Award is BioSimulytics – the company was founded in 2019 by Professor Niall English, Dr Christian Burnham, and Peter Doyle as a spin-out from the UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering.
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Innovation Champion of the Year Award is Professor Ronan Cahill, Professor of Surgery at UCD School of Medicine and at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Licence of the Year Award is Professor Andrew Keane, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Director, UCD Energy Institute.
The recipient of the 2022 NovaUCD Outstanding Achievement Award is Aidan Corbett, co-founder, Wayflyer.
Main Image: Pictured at University College Dublin are Sheena Bailey and Louella Morton, co-founders, TestReach, recipients of the 2022 NovaUCD Founder of the Year Award. (Nick Bradshaw, Fotonic.)
