Mayo entrepreneurs vie for 100000 award
TWO Mayo entrepreneurs are vying to win the 2015 David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Award, the winner of which will be announced on February 17. Lisa Coen from Cross and Dr. Eoin Syron from Crossmolina are shortlisted in the arts and business categories respectively.
The overall winner and winner in each of the arts, business and social categories will be announced at a ceremony in the offices of Mason, Hayes & Curran, Dublin, on February 17 by Dr. Chris Horn, chair of the panel of judges, and guest speaker, Emma Manley, owner and creative director at Manley. The overall winner will win a prize package worth over €100,000 – comprising of €10,000 in cash and mentoring and consultancy services from a range of companies.
Lisa Coen and her business partner, Sarah Davis-Goff, set up Tramp Press – an independent publisher which is changing the landscape of what Irish publishing is capable of accomplishing, and in so doing, brings great new writing to readers.
After college, Lisa worked with Hot Press magazine for three years as production coordinator, managing copy control and liaising with contributors, sub-editing, proofreading and copy-writing. She returned to college to complete an M.Phil in Anglo-Irish literature, then a PhD on Irish theatre, continuing to work freelance as an editor and proofreader. After finishing her PhD, Lisa worked for The Lilliput Press, where she met Sarah and they came up with Tramp Press.
Dr. Eoin Syron, Professor Eoin Casey and Wayne Byrne set up OxyMem to solve a challenge relating to energy-intensive wastewater treatment. The two Eoins developed a breakthrough MABR (Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor) technology which uses at least four times less energy than traditional aeration systems.
Dr. Syron is OxyMem’s technical leader and innovator. A graduate of UCD in 2003 with a BE degree in chemical engineering, Eoin went on to complete a PhD investigating the membrane aerated biofilm reactor, which resulted in a patent, which he made in partnership with Prof. Casey. This patent forms the basis for the OxyMem proposition.
Eoin spent three years with Veolia where he was involved in the design and tender of industrial wastewater treatment plants. In 2011, he returned to the Biofilm group (UCD) to continue work on OxyMem, this time focusing on scale up issues and investigating full-scale deployment of the technology.