SFI Principal Investigator Award for SBES Researcher
Professor Jeremy Simpson of the UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science has been awarded €1,588,726 under the Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator Programme.
Announcing the awards, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Batt O’Keeffe said that the selected projects have “the capacity to create new jobs in the ‘smart’ economy because they targeted high-growth areas at the cutting-edge of innovation”. Eight UCD research projects received awards ranging from about €630,000 to €1.6m.
Professor Jeremy Simpson
Award: €1,588,726
Research Project: Dissecting plasma membrane to endoplasmic reticulum trafficking pathways in mammalian cells – potential new avenues for improved drug delivery
Currently our understanding of how to direct drugs to the various compartments within cells is poor, but improved knowledge could make the drugs much more effective. Using microscopy-based methods, and cells growing in the laboratory, the proposed research will discover how pathways between compartments are controlled, and this information will be used to help design drugs that can be better targeted to various sub-compartments of the cell.