April 2017 NUI Galway Announces Appointment of BioInnovate Director

NUI Galway is delighted to announce that Dr Faisal Sharif has been appointed the new Director of BioInnovate Ireland. A Stanford-affiliated programme at NUI Galway, BioInnovate Ireland brings together doctors, engineers, designers and business experts to identify unmet medical needs and develop solutions that directly benefit patients. 

Dr Sharif is the one of the founding members and clinical director of the programme which began in 2011. An Interventional Cardiologist in the Saolta group and a Senior Lecturer in NUI Galway, he has a keen interest in new medical devices for unmet clinical needs and has started multiple new programmes in collaboration with industry and the Saolta group. He also directs the Cardiovascular Research Centre in NUI Galway.

Professor Peter McHugh, Dean of NUI Galway’s College of Engineering and Informatics, said: “This highly successful programme directly addresses the demand for innovation training and the generation of new product concepts in the Medtech sector; the fact that it is led by NUI Galway is testament to our world-leading status in this industrial area, and we wish Faisal every success in his new role to take the programme to even greater success.”

Dr Faisal Sharif said: “Since its inception, BioInnovate Ireland has forged very strong links with the industry, clinicians and academics. I look forward to strategically growing the ‘BioInnovate Ireland’ brand both nationally and internationally and advancing its mission by producing world-class entrepreneurs for our indigenous Medtech sector. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to BioInnovate Ireland in the last six years, including the previous Director Professor Mark Bruzzi and I look forward to the next phase of this exciting programme.”

The programme mission is to develop future Medtech entrepreneurs through a well-defined process of need identification to commercialization. Participants focus on one specific clinical area and receive mentorship from industry, clinicians, Venture Capitalists, domain experts and academics. Each participant is supported by Enterprise Ireland. Teams are located in partner universities, perform their initial clinical immersion phase in the associated hospitals, and subsequently in hospitals across the country. To date, team members have interacted with hundreds of clinical staff in over 50 hospitals.

The programme has developed global links including Stanford, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic (USA) and Karolinska/KTH (Sweden).

-Ends-