UCC ThinkSmart Spin-Out Created 

Research IP from Cork Constraint Computing Centre Leads to the Creation Software Start-Up

University College Cork has announced the creation of its latest spin-out firm, ThinkSmart Technologies, and the potential for the Enterprise Ireland supported company to employ 30 people.

As a result of highly advanced technology researched and developed by researchers at UCC's Cork Constraint Computing Centre (4C), ThinkSmart Technologies has invented a system that mixes maths and artificial intelligence to analyse circumstances and speed up decision making for companies in industry sectors from treasury management through to manufacturing, and the company says it has already secured a number of customers in the financial services, business process management and energy sectors. 

The company's entrepreneurial team is led by Dr Brendan O'Brien and Dr James Little . O'Brien has 20 years commercial experience in the international software and consultancy sectors and previously led a start-up to successful takeover. James Little is a leading researcher at 4C where he has led many applied industry projects over the past 8 years, prior to which he worked for several years in a technical capacity for leading-edge decision support software companies in the UK.

The company claims that its new technology, whose intellectual property is licensed to them by UCC, is set to revolutionise decision-making capability in business and industry. Its Optimisation software solutions can help organisations to choose the best options open to them from available alternatives, and can be used for a diverse range of applications such as the scheduling of airline crews, routing trucks supplying supermarkets or customising package holidays for individual travellers. It could also be used in different fields including studies into diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease or Cystic Fibrosis.

The company says its core platform technology, ‘Intellify', provides a rapid development environment to create vertical industry solutions or integration with existing business systems. The environment connects various decision technologies such as Constraint Programming, Mathematical Programming, Planning, Business Rules and Case-based Reasoning, along with Scheduling and Planning technologies, to provide a single unified platform capable of modelling and solving difficult business problems. The ThinkSmart system operates in real time at all times updating the optimum solution regardless of how complex the problem or how often the conditions change as real time information is fed into it.

Dr Brendan O'Brien CEO of ThinkSmart (pictured centre with James Little, ThinkSmart CTO (L) and Patrick Morrissey from the UCC Technology Transfer Office (right)), said: "This is a fantastic opportunity for us to bring excellent research from a world leading centre, package it and take it to market worldwide. We now have a world class technology that enables us to enter new and emerging markets with competitive advantages and a very high barrier to entry.

In the current climate making better decisions consistently can offer substantial savings and increased competitive advantage. Already we are gaining strong traction in the business process and outsourcing industry, as well as early stage development in financial services. In addition, we are beginning to work in the green energy space with some promising results."

ThinkSmart is one of a steady stream of knowledge intensive start-ups emerging from UCC following from four other spin outs in 2009. It will be based in UCC's advanced new incubation centre adjacent to the 4C research centre. The close location of research bases to spin-outs and early stage companies is a deliberate part of UCC's strategy to fully support and resource the growth of high quality, sustainable, knowledge based companies.

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