Majella Maher
Majella Maher, Regional Manager, West Region Team, Enterprise Ireland
Professional with more than 30 years experience in Lifesciences Research and Commercialisation. As Regional Manager of the Enterprise Ireland West Region Team, I work with colleagues and stakeholders in the regions to drive and support entrepreneurship and enterprise development. Key initiatives include the identification of gaps in regional infrastructure, services and supports to enterprise and the investment in these through programmes like the Regional Enterprise Development Programme and the Smart Regions Enterprise Innovation Programme.
The innovation hubs, programmes and clusters supported provide homes to ambitious entrepreneurs, start-ups, SMEs, soft landing for FDIs, communities and wrap- around supports and programmes to enable them to grow, innovate and scale. From a number of years, I worked with academic entrepreneurs with ideas for deeptech disruptive start-ups, nuturing them and supporting them with funding through the Enterprise Ireland commercialisation fund programme to develop and commercialise their innovations. Additionally, I managed the Enterprise Ireland commercialisation fund programme operationally for over 10 years.
My early career in Lifesciences was at the University of Galway working in applied research in molecular microbiology progressing to obtain a Ph.D and leading a team in molecular diagnostics for more than 10 years successfully publishing, patenting and commercialising with major in vitro diagnostics companies. I successfully graduated 7 Ph.Ds and was appointed an adjunct lecturer at the universit