Fiona’s firm is making a beeline for the top
A Cork company with strong Kanturk connections, ApisProtect has received a €1.5 million investment boost to create 25 new jobs.
ApisProtect is headed up by Dr Fiona Edwards Murphy (from Kanturk), Dr Pádraig Whelan and Andrew Wood, a team with complementary backgrounds, including engineering, scientific, beekeeping and commercial experience.
ApisProtect provides an in-hive sensor network with long-range, cellular and satellite-powered communication to proactively monitor honey bee colonies. Combining the sensor data on hive conditions, health and activity levels with its proprietary big data and machine learning techniques, ApisProtect gives beekeepers actionable insights and alerts to help prevent losses and increase colony productivity.
Dr Edwards Murphy - daughter of Sean and Susan Edwards Murphy - has a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and a BE from University College Cork in 2013. As a graduate of UCC, Edwards Murphy participated in the Ignite programme, an international award-winning business start-up programme that specialises in supporting recent third-level graduates to turn innovative ideas into successful, scalable businesses. She won the Ignite Business of the Year Award in 2016.
Her work has received international recognition, including at least eight academic publications, awards from the Irish Research Council, IBM, The Irish Laboratory Awards, and Google. ApisProtect was partially funded by St. Louis-based agtech accelerator The Yield Lab in 2016.
“With a science-driven, multi-disciplinary leadership team, ApisProtect is primed to fundamentally change the way commercial beekeepers around the globe manage their hives,” added Kieran Furlong of Finistere Ventures. “Our Ireland Agtech Fund is dedicated to investing in early stage agtech companies reshaping the global food and ag industries. ApisProtect was the prime candidate for the fund’s first Irish investment. There is a need for technologies to aid pollination in agriculture, and ApisProtect hive monitor technology has massive potential in key markets like California.”
Fiona is also the recent winner of the Sodexo WMB Female Newcomer Award for 2018 at the Women Mean Business Conference & Awards.