Research & Innovation

It was nearly a total victory for Irish researchers at this year’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Awards (MSCA), held in Luxembourg City last Thursday (10 December), with two out of the three award winners coming from these shores.

The European Commission (EC) backed awards ceremony was held in Luxembourg  with a focus on COFUND, a scheme that aims to stimulate regional, national or international programmes to encourage researchers’ training, mobility and career development, while spreading the best practices of Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s legacy as a pioneering nuclear physicist.

One of the first Irish award winners of the night was Prof David Hoey (picture : on the right), an associate professor of biomechanical engineering in Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Hoey, who was funded with help from the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the European Union’s (EU) MSCA COFUND, has been pursuing advanced research into developing innovative treatments for bone loss diseases such as osteoporosis.

The second Irish winner on the night was Donegal native Dr Aiden Doherty, who is currently a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford.

As an IRC scholar at Dublin City University (DCU) from 2005 to 2008, Doherty’s research interest is in the development of computational methods to extract meaningful health information from complex and noisy sensor data in very large health studies.

Congratulating them on their achievement, the chair of the IRC, Jane Ohlmeyer, said that “securing these prizes represents a very significant achievement for the recipients”, before adding that it will help grow Ireland’s reputation as a science leader within Europe.