Posted 22 May 2014
UCD joint first in total number of funding awards under SFI Investigators Programme
Seven research projects led by University College Dublin and one partnered with Teagasc will receive funding under the latest round of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Investigator Programme. This is the joint highest number of research projects from any one institution to receive funding under this round.
In total, the €47 million SFI Investigators Programme funding [recently] announced by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD and the Minister for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock TD, will support 36 research projects involving over 200 researchers across Ireland.
“Central to our Action Plan for Jobs is ensuring that we focus our research and innovation on job-creation – turning good ideas into good jobs,” said the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD.
“The funding we are announcing [today] will directly support over 200 highly skilled researchers in Ireland through to 2019, and is linked to 62 private sector companies. This investment through SFI helps to develop Ireland’s international reputation for excellent research with impact. This allows us to continue to attract foreign-direct investment, as well as to support Irish companies, long-term economic competitiveness and most importantly ultimately job-creation.”
The Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock TD said, “This major investment will support world-class research in key priority areas that support economic and social development in Ireland. By concentrating on sectors of strength, the SFI Investigators Programme aligns funding to areas of increasing national and international importance. This will create many opportunities for successful collaboration between industry and Ireland’s science ecosystem.”
The Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Programme supports excellent scientific research that has the potential to impact Ireland’s economic and societal development. The 36 projects were selected by competitive peer review by 400 international scientists, focusing on excellent research with potential impact.
The successfully funded projects have links to 62 companies, and include research in areas such as sustainable food production, enhancing communications networks to enable high quality internet video, developing innovative wave energy devices, biopharmaceutical production, cancer detection and investigating the control of epilepsy development.
Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland said, “The Investigators Programme will support Ireland’s research community in developing projects that can lead and win in Horizon 2020. Not only will it provide direct support for over 200 researchers, the programme will also have an indirect impact on many other research programmes by allowing for the development of further research links with industry in Ireland and internationally.”
| Name | Research Title | Award | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr Seamas Donnelly | UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science and St Vincent’s University Hospital | Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), enzymatic activity & Pseudomonas Aeruginosa infection | €1,741,156 |
| Prof Patrick Lonergan | UCD School of Agriculture5 & Food Science | Reducing embryo mortality through improved understanding of embryo maternal communication | €866,991 |
| Prof Gary McGuire | UCD School of Mathematical Sciences | Theory and Application for the Discrete Logarithm Problem in Finite Fields: setting a Cryptographic World Record | €634,291 |
| Dr Michael O'Neill | UCD School of Computer Science & Informatics | App'ED | €1,812,988 |
| Prof Stefan Oscarson | UCD School of Chemistry & Chemical Biology | Design, Synthesis, and Development of Carbohydrate–Based Vaccines, Therapeutics, Diagnostics, and Medical Devices. | €1,971,203 |
| Dr Wenxin Wang | UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science and Charles Institute of Dermatology | In situ formed Skin Substitute in Combination with Gene Therapy for Wound Healing | €1,188,389 |
| Prof Kenneth Wolfe | UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science | Sexual cycles, genomics, and mating-type switching in non-conventional yeast species | €921,625 |
| Michael Diskin & Prof Mark Crowe | Teagasc / UCD School of Veterinary Medicine | The development of early non-invasive and reliable molecular biomarkers of pregnancy in dairy cattle. | €1,162,915 |
(Produced by UCD University Relations)
