Professor Damion Corrigan has been crowned the winner in the Academic Entrepreneur category in the annual Praxis Auril Knowledge Exchange Awards.
The Awards celebrate the people, partnerships and creativity that underpin the UK’s knowledge exchange (KE) activity, with the Academic Entrepreneur award recognising outstanding individuals.
Professor Corrigan is a prolific academic entrepreneur dedicated to translating his research in electrochemical biosensors into real-world applications and has developed four pieces of commercially valuable Intellectual Property at Strathclyde.
Spin-outs
He has achieved notable success in founding two innovative spin-out companies, Aureum Diagnostics and Microplate Dx, addressing global healthcare challenges.
At Aureum, he supports development of a low-cost biomarker detection platform for point-of-care disease detection and at Microplate Dx, he champions their antibiotic stewardship mission, developing antibiotic susceptibility testing for Urinary Tract Infections treatment.
Through his commitment to Knowledge Exchange and mentorship, Professor Corrigan has supported academic graduates taking leadership and technical positions within these companies. He is also Professor of Measurement Science for the Health Laboratory of the Government Chemist, a strategic partnership between the University of Strathclyde, the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC (NML at LGC), and NHS Lanarkshire, and Director of the Centre for Advanced Measurement Science and Health Translation at Strathclyde.
Research ideas
Professor Corrigan said: “I’d like to thank our Innovation and industry Engagement team who I’ve been working with for some time on these projects.
“The knowledge exchange ecosystem at Strathclyde has enabled the team to develop research ideas into potentially useful products and it’s been great to see so many young researchers move through from the University lab into the spin out environment.”
Strathclyde Principal & Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Jim McDonald said:
I’m delighted at this very well-deserved award and send congratulations to Damion, his team and the Strathclyde colleagues who have supported his journey so far. It’s great to see his excellence in Knowledge Exchange and commercialisation being recognised in this way.
Fellow nominees included Lancaster University academic and the CEO of Mindgard Ltd, Peter Garraghan and Dr Srijan Jindal from the University of Liverpool.
Organised by the UK’s professional association for KE practitioners, the PraxisAuril KE Awards celebrate the individuals and teams that create sustained impact from the UK’s world-class research base with a diverse range of partners and programmes.
Gurmit Kler, Former Director of Business Engagement and Research Impact at the University of Birmingham, was Chair of the judging panel for 2023, and the awards were presented at a ceremony in Leeds on November 23.