24 November, 2023

As the conversation about climate change becomes more urgent and we begin to understand the nature of the crisis we face, MyGug founders Kieran Coffey and Fiona Kelleher looked for a solution to help us treat the planet more kindly. As a result, MyGug was developed. MyGug is a Food Waste treatment system/anaerobic digester that fully integrates into a small food business or school setting.

MyGug, recent winners of the Sustainability Award in the Irish Times Innovation Awards 2023, have openly engaged with MTU with active participation with various departments throughout the university.

One part of this collaboration with MTU took place in November. MyGug gave a guest speaker talk to the Department of Process, Energy and Technology second year and third year students of the BEng in Sustainable Energy Engineering, third year students in BEng in Chemical Engineering and students from the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Society.

The talks focused on various topics such as transforming an innovative idea into a business, grants/funding, market research and voice of the customer to a focus on circular economy – that is achievable, can be local, is effective and indeed can be both aesthetically pleasing and a talking point!

“Kieran was really excellent, and it was good for the students to hear how he moved from iteration to iteration in development of his product and to see someone living entrepreneurship” – Aisling O’Gorman, Lecturer, Department of Process, Energy and Transport.

As we continue this collaboration with MyGug, MTU Extended Campus on behalf of the SME Cluster Growth- Empowered Engineering project is proud to have nominated Kieran to attend the founder/start-up focused Slush Event held in Finland at the end of November.

We look forward to continuing our relationship and engagements with MyGug and it has been fantastic to watch this relationship build within MTU.

If your company is interested in becoming more actively involved with MTU, contact MTU Extended Campus extended.campusCork@mtu.ie