• Agri Food Category: BFree Foods (Dublin), Dr Coy’s Health Foods Ltd (Wicklow) and Ocean Harvest Technology  (Galway)
• Bioscience Category: Embo Medical (Galway), Fusion Antibodies Ltd (Antrim) and Lloyds Online Doctor (Dublin)
• Creative Industries Category: ARCKIT (Dublin), The Creativity Hub (Antrim) and WholeWorldBand (Dublin)
• Energy & The Environment Category: AmbiSense Ltd (Dublin), REDT Energy (Dublin) and Surface Power HONE (Dublin)
• IT & Communications Category: Core Systems (Antrim), Nautilus NI Ltd (Down), Sedicii (Waterford)
• Manufacturing: Category:   AmaTech Group Ltd (Galway), Andor Technology (Antrim), Panelduct (Mayo)  

The Prizes

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on Friday 17th April 2015 in Belfast.  Each category winner will secure a €10,000 media package with The Irish Times and an iPad. They will then compete to win the overall title of ‘Innovation of the Year’, which awards the winner with a communications and advertising package from The Irish Times, worth €150,000. In addition, a UCD scholarship for an Executive Education programme commencing in 2016 and a state of the art laptop .

Judges

More than x detailed entries were reviewed by an initial panel of judges from the world of academia, media and business. The 18 shortlisted entries will present their innovations before a distinguished final panel of judges in Dublin in February. The final judging panel includes:

• Dr. Christopher J Horn, co-founder of Iona Technologies
• Aidan Gough, Strategy & Policy Director, InterTradeIreland
• Norman Crowley,   CEO & Founder, Crowley Carbon Ltd
• Mark Nodder, Group Managing Director, the Wright Group.
• Helen Kirkpatrick MBE
• Kevin Neary, co-founder of the GameStop Group
• David Woolfson, CEO of Gabriel Scientific

For more information

For more information, visit www.irishtimes.com/business/innovation/innovation-awards-2015.  InterTradeIreland is a joint partner of the 2015 awards.  Associate Sponsors include: Teagasc, Science Foundation Ireland and UCD Michael Smurfit Business Graduate School.