Hooke Bio Ltd. was founded in 2014 by Professor Mark Davies at Stokes Laboratories, University of Limerick (UL), a research center which has a rich history of microfluidic entrepreneurship. Hooke Bio spun out from the UL in 2017 and is currently based in Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland. The company is named after Robert Hooke (scientist, astronomer, engineer and architect). He was the first person to image a microorganism using a microscope and coined the term "cell". Prior to 2017, Hooke Bio was funded by two Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation funds. Private investment along with support from EI’s High Potential Start-Up fund allowed the company to spin out from the University of Limerick in 2017. Hooke Bio won Enterprise Ireland’s ‘One-to-Watch Award’ Big Idea’s Showcase in 2017 and was the gold winner at the National Start-up MedTech Awards in 2018. The company received further support from Angel investors (Boole Investment Syndicate and Irrus Investments) and the Western Development Commission investment fund in 2018. In Jan 2019, Hooke bio won €1.9m in the first round of funding through the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) in collaboration with the Centre for advanced photonics and process analysis (CAPPA) and NUI, Galway. In conjunction with the DTIF award received in 2019, Hooke Bio set up its premises in Shannon, Co. Clare.
