Causeway Sensors Ltd
Causeway Sensors Limited, a Queen’s University Spin Out Company are developing breakthrough plasmonic sensors for commercial application in the world of drug manufacturing. Fundamental to this commercial opportunity, is over two decades of world leading research in nanofabrication techniques and understanding how nanostructures interact with light. Working in the Centre for Nanostructured Media Dr Pollard’s research group developed a plasmonic sensor chip which is very sensitive to surface binding events of, for example, the therapeutic antibodies being developed for treating COVID-19. The team are now focusing on producing their technology so that it can plug into bioreactors to monitor the quality of the drugs being created.
The spin out company was founded following research that led to over 30 high impact journal publications, including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Physical Review Letters, Nano Letters, ACS Nano and Nanotechnology.
The company has raised £1.8M in equity funding to explore the commercialisation of their platform technology.
In 2018, Causeway Sensors was recognised by the Institute of Physics with a business start up award.
EP/G010374/1: Fabrication, Characterisation & Nanophotonic Applications of Plasmonic Waveguides made of Metallic Nanorod Arrays
https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/G010374/1
EP/I014004/1: Magneto-Optic and ellipsometric study of nanostructured media
https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/I014004/1
EP/H000917/2: Active Plasmonics: electronic & all-optical control of photonic signals on sub-wavelength scales
https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/H000917/2
The North West Centre for Advanced Manufacturing (NWCAM) – Causeway Sensors are working in collaboration with the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at Glasgow University and NIBEC at Ulster University. The goal is to find the optimum nanostructures for biosensing applications and find suitable medical grade plastics for incorporating them into a device.
https://wearecatalyst.org/research/nw-cam/
SmartNanoNI – Causeway sensors are a consortium member of ‘The Smart Nanomanufacturing Corridor’. This is a Seagate Technologies led project which has reached seedcorn stage of the Strength in Places (UKRI) funding call. The goal of the project is to develop game-changing advanced prototyping and smart manufacturing methods to deliver new technologies. These will have applications across medical research, data storage and data analysis as well growing innovation and scale up capacity in device manufacturing.