Unity for Humanity grant recipient
Unity's official feature identifies Liam as Rephobia's founder and describes the venture's therapist-led approach.
Official biography
About Liam Harte
Founder of Rephobia, immersive-technology builder and startup mentor connecting technical ambition with responsible real-world delivery.
The story
Building around difficult human problems
Liam Harte is the founder of Rephobia, a Belfast-based health-technology venture developing a clinician-controlled virtual reality platform to support exposure therapy. The work began with lived experience of OCD and a severe fear of public speaking, then grew through product development, clinical collaboration and research at Queen's University Belfast.
Liam studied Computer Science at Queen's University Belfast. Across Rephobia and his wider immersive work, he has coordinated product development, 360-degree content, clinical and academic relationships, evidence gathering, grant funding and venture strategy.
He also works with accelerators, incubators, university programmes and early-stage founders. His workshops and office hours focus on outputs that have to survive a real deadline: decks, applications, funding plans, pilot designs and the questions that follow a pitch.
The connecting concern is not a single technology. It is how carefully governed immersive systems can help people approach difficult real-world situations while preserving human agency, safety and responsible facilitation.
Current work
Founder, builder and near-peer mentor
Rephobia: building a therapist-led immersive platform with clinical oversight, evidence and medical-device readiness treated as core product work.
Programme support: helping young and technical founders make their case clearly to funders, judges, partners and pilot sites.
Responsible immersive systems: exploring how XR can support difficult encounters without removing the people responsible for care, facilitation and judgement.
Selected milestones
Independent recognition
National Entrepreneur of the Year
The Peter Jones Foundation named Liam its National Entrepreneur of the Year for Rephobia.
Enterprise Ireland merit award
Enterprise Ireland awarded Rephobia its High Achieving Merit Award at the Student Entrepreneur Awards.
Young Entrepreneur Fund winner
Simply Business selected Liam and Rephobia among ten Young Entrepreneur Fund winners.
Work together
Bring founder-level urgency to your next cohort milestone
If you run an accelerator, incubator, innovation hub or university programme, share the cohort, dates and outcome you are working towards.