rof Pat Fottrell, Chairman, SFI; Prof Gil Lee, UCD; Dr David McHugh, UCD; Prof Des Fitzgerald, Vice President for Research, UCD; Conor Lenihan T.D., Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation; Dr Brian Vohnsen, UCD; Professor Stephen Gordon, UCD; and Professor Stephen Simpson, Director, Life Sciences, SFI.
Conor Lenihan TD, Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation has announced research funding awards of €8.8million to world-class research projects at UCD under the Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator Programme. Innovations resulting from the successful eight UCD projects are set to create employment across areas that include medical research and treatment for cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, asthma, cystic fibrosis, meningitis, optical diseases, as well as solutions arising from climate change modelling, cloud computing and cyber security projects.
In total €20.7million was awarded to 22 research projects under the programme, with eight of these projects led by UCD. Making the announcement, Minister Lenihan said ‘Today’s Government investment will enable crucial research to be carried out in Ireland over the next three to five years.’
The UCD-led awards were made to:
The Minister added ‘The Government remains firmly committed to developing the Smart Economy. It is research projects such as these that will support the next phase of Ireland’s economic development. We must never lose sight of the fact that research and development is primarily about people - the individual and collective talents of our skilled personnel.’
‘We must continue to support the best researchers to bring about long-term economic benefits and with the assistance of support structures such as SFI, IDA and Enterprise Ireland, we can bring these concepts to that next level, and through exploitation and commercialisation ensure economic and societal benefits for Ireland,’ the Minister said.
