Research & Innovation

Forty scientific projects ranging from microbiology to clean energies are to benefit from €23m in research funding, the result of a deal between Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Irish Government.

SFI and Seán Sherlock, the Minister for Research and Innovation, revealed the funding at the Science Gallery in Dublin.

The €23m aims to help ensure Ireland’s most talented young researchers remain in Ireland, while also helping to attract excellent young researchers from other countries to base themselves in Ireland.

The funding is being delivered by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, through SFI’s Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) and Career Development Award (CDA) Programmes. The fund is to support researchers and post-graduate students working on projects in areas such as cancer research, neurological disorders, immunology, microbiology, biotherapeutics, wireless networks, and sustainable and renewable energy.

The 40 projects awarded funding ranging from €440,000 to €812,000 are from institutes all across Ireland. They include:

• Trinity College Dublin (with five projects)
• National University of Ireland Galway (five projects)
• RoyalCollege of Surgeons in Ireland (four projects)
• DublinCityUniversity (four projects)
• UniversityCollege Cork (four projects)
• University of Limerick (four projects)
• National University of Ireland Maynooth (three projects)
• UniversityCollegeDublin (three projects)
• National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (three projects)
• Teagasc (two projects)
• Tyndall National Institute (two projects)
• Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (one project)

The SFI’s director-general Mark Ferguson spoke of how a further 12 projects just missed out on this fund but may be considered in the foundation’s budgets later this year.

The highest amount of funding has been presented to Fatima Gunning of the Tyndall Institute and her project entitled Software Defined Control of Superchannel Transponders for super-Tb/s Elastic Optical Networks, which received €812,000 as part of the 2013 CDA-approved awards.

Ferguson also described this funding as another way of creating better channels between academia and commercial developments.

“Both of the programmes under which funding is being announced today will help promising young researchers to create and develop impactful careers here in Ireland and in turn enable the pursuit of scientific research that has potential economic and societal impact.”