ProfessorDominic Zerulla

Audience Choice Award for Liroptic's shape shifting technology and demonstration.

International recognition for Liroptic and the novel shape shifting lens technology

In this international and highly competitive award competition, only 5 companies globally receive the Samsung Mobile Advance Grant each year. Prof. Zerulla and his team received the award for a novel shape shifting lens technology.

Highest UCD award for translational research & commercialization. Professor Dominic Zerulla was the recipient of the main 2022 NovaUCD Innovation Award (the primary "Innovator of the Year" accolade at University College Dublin). A physicist and the founder of the UCD spin-out company PEARlabs, Professor Zerulla was recognized for his groundbreaking work in developing a photonic chip for optical microscopy aimed at improving medical diagnostics.

Awarded for PEARLabs deep-tech innovation. Viewers’ Choice Award: PEARlabs (a UCD spin-out founded by Prof. Dominic Zerulla and pitched by Jürgen Osing) won the Viewers' Choice Award for its patented photonic chip technology in optical microscopy.

The SFI Future Innovator Prize is a new challenge funding opportunity from Science Foundation Ireland. It seeks to support Ireland’s best and brightest unconventional thinkers and innovators to develop novel, potentially disruptive, technologies to address significant societal challenges. To do this, the prize will enable the formation of high-performance interdisciplinary STEM research teams to identify and validate challenges of national significance. These teams will develop solutions to those challenges based on the unconventional perspectives arising from the convergence of knowledge, practice and methods from the different disciplines and sectors involved. This prize will empower innovators through a “bottom-up” approach that will allow them to identify challenges and develop solutions in new ways. It is envisaged that future calls will be targeted at specific challenge areas. Under the SFI Future Innovator Prize, the challenges to be addressed must be significant; of strategic national importance and globally relevant. In this way, the prize will enable researchers to apply their knowledge and expertise to address key issues of strategic importance to Ireland but also provide a platform from which researchers can translate their solutions to take advantage of a global opportunity. A challenge is a bold and ambitious goal that drives innovation toward addressing a complex, often intractable, societal issue/problem. Challenges and their solutions involve many stakeholders and beneficiaries across both public and private sectors/systems (e.g. government, national agencies and services, industry, HEIs, regulators, entrepreneurs, investors). As a result, the identification of challenges and the development of solutions requires a combination of technical and non-technical skills and insights. To maximise the potential for societal impact, the prize places strong emphasis on collaborative approaches that bring together diverse STEM researchers, stakeholders and the beneficiaries of research, to define challenges in new ways and co-create novel, potentially disruptive, solutions that should transform how we live. It is anticipated that the prize will incentivise stakeholders to co-develop solutions thereby amplifying collective capabilities to create sustainable, equitable and innovation-led growth. This has the potential to not only drive societal impact here in Ireland but also give Ireland a unique advantage in addressing challenges that have global implications. The SFI Future Innovator Prize will consist of three phases: Concept, Seed and Prize Award. Following application review, successful applicant teams will be awarded funding of €20k to undertake team building, scoping and concept validation activities. They will then undergo a rigorous interview and shortlisted teams will be provided with funding of €200k to further validate and prototype their proposed solutions. Finalists will compete for an overall prize award of €1M.

ISE 2000, Düsseldorf Germany Co-organizer

Chair

Scholarly edition

Young Scientist Exhibition 2007 (presenter)

Director

Elected member

Photonics Ireland 2017-2019, Reviewer and Board Member: Plasmonics and Nanooptics, Session organizer,

Elected member

Member

Anonymous peer review

Elected member

Science Days

Consultancy�

Science Festival

SFI STARS