A UCD professor championing the development of a connected health ecosystem was presented with the NovaUCD 2017 Innovation Award at the college’s campus in Belfield on Friday.
Prof Brian Caulfield, the dean of physiotherapy, won the award for his "successful commercialisation of research", undertaken at UCD's School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.
The focus of Prof Caulfield’s research programme has been on exploiting technological advances to enhance human performance in the fields of connected health and sport, through wearable and mobile sensing measurement and intervention applications.
These applications are now opening up new avenues for human performance evaluation and enhancement in areas from elite sport to rehabilitation medicine to gerontology.
UCD president Prof Andrew Deeks said Prof Caulfield was "a champion of the connected health research and innovation ecosystem".
“This award recognises the quality and impact of his peer-reviewed research, his commitment and success in commercialising the resulting intellectual property, and his dedication to forging key strategic links with policy makers,” he said.
On receiving the award, Prof Caulfield said it reflected “the importance of the role that the academic sector can play in developing and evaluating the next wave of technological advances”.
“It also demonstrates the strategic importance of interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration as none of my research and commercialisation activities would have been possible without such collaboration,” he added.
