CeADAR makes AI projects available for free to support COVID-19 R&D activities

Posted 6 May, 2020

CeADAR, Ireland’s Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence based at University College Dublin, has opened up its portfolio of technology demonstrator projects to be licensed for free by companies and industry for potential use in COVID-19 research and development activities.

The centre, funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA, is a partnership between UCD and TU Dublin, and is based at NexusUCD, the Industry Partnership Centre.

CeADAR will work with NovaUCD and TU Dublin Hothouse, the knowledge transfer centres in UCD and TU Dublin respectively, to license relevant technology demonstrator projects using Knowledge Transfer Ireland’s (KTI) recently announced dedicated COVID-19 Non-Exclusive Royalty-Free (NERF) Licence.

The available technology demonstrator projects, which are in the broad areas of artificial intelligence, data analytics and machine learning, have been developed by CeADAR researchers at UCD and TU Dublin over the last several years.

They are based on proposals received from industry members and are all at the proof-of-concept stage, which demonstrate the potential of the particular technical approach to the challenges set by members.

Dr Edward McDonnell, CeADAR Director, said: “These demonstrator projects were not developed with COVID-19 in mind and will need to be reworked once use cases have been identified by industry, and we can also support industry in this regard with our technical expertise and knowledge.”

The aim of the two-page KTI COVID-19 NERF licence is to speed up the dissemination of critical COVID-19 related intellectual property from Irish universities and Institutes of Technology to companies.

The KTI COVID-19 NERF will remain in place until such time as the World Health Organisation declares the current COVID-19 pandemic to have ended.

Tom Flanagan, Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation, NovaUCD, said: “We strongly support and welcome today’s announcement by CeADAR that it intends to use the new COVID-19 NERF licence to help accelerate the dissemination of its technology demonstrator projects. Our knowledge transfer team at NovaUCD will work with CeADAR to help companies and industry parties to quickly access the relevant IP.”

The CeADAR portfolio of technology demonstrator projects is available (opens in a new window)here.

By: Staff Writers, UCD University Relations (with materials from Micéal Whelan, UCD Research and Innovation)