'Cold Light' image by Carlos Hernandez
Government funding of €7.9million under a new Science Foundation Ireland initiative will help 15 highly-talented researchers at an early stage in their profession to progress towards a fully independent academic research career.
Dr Abdelhamid Nafaa from UCD School of Computer Science & Informatics was among the recipients of the funding for his project entitled ‘Scalable and Reliable Video on Demand Systems Based on the Peer-To-Peer Paradigm’.
Dr Nafaa and his team will investigate, design, and develop a novel architecture to provide digital video services over IP networks. In particular, the team will exploit peer-to-peer (P2P) video streaming architecture to dramatically decrease the delivery cost of video services, resulting in a decisive competitive advantage for video services providers by eliminating the need for traditional costly video servers.
Announcing the first SFI Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) awards, Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Mr Conor Lenihan TD said: ‘It is vital that we have in Ireland the mechanism to keep and attract to Ireland highly skilled, early-stage career researchers.’
The Minister added ‘these 15 outstanding individuals are among the brightest working in Irish laboratories today, and SIRG provides them with the necessary support to enable the transition from team member to independent and accomplished innovator in their respective fields. It will also allow them to recruit 15 postgraduate students’.
‘The research of these successful awardees will focus on strategic areas such as renewable energy, cancer research, genetics and telecommunications that will benefit both society and the economy,’ the Minister concluded.
