The T·naiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Mary Harney has announced that Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has made awards of 42 million euro to create in Ireland new world class research Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSETs).
These awards go to researchers in Irish universities who can make Ireland an international leader in key strategic areas through collaborations with scientists and engineers in industry.
These investments will create an extraordinary set of research partnerships connecting Irish universities with their counterparts from world leading research corporations and some of Ireland's most promising ICT and biotechnology companies. The Centres will link faculty at universities in Cork, Dublin and Galway with their counterparts from HP, Procter and Gamble and Servier. Irish companies involved in these partnerships include Surgen, Alimentary Health and Allegro Technologies.
SFI has made these first CSET grants for five years and committed at least 12 million euro to each of the three centres approved. This funding is bolstered further by industry partners, who are required by the CSET programme to add 20 percent to SFI's support for these awards in the form of funding, personnel, or equipment. The three centres will employ approximately 150 researchers, graduate students and others as a result of this funding.
These CSET awards build on investments of more than 150 million euro that SFI has made since 2001, in support of the ground breaking research efforts of 80 individual investigators and fellow award recipients.
Announcing the awards the T·naiste said: “These are the most significant grants SFI has made to date in building Ireland's new knowledge-based economy. They create global strategic value for Ireland by embedding industrial research efforts leveraged with academic talent, that will generate new ideas and products, train the research talent of the 21st century and produce the research and development from which high-wage economies around the world have grown.”
The three CSET recipients are NUI Galway, Royal College of Surgeons, and UCC.
At NUI Galway, Digital Enterprise Research Centre will partner with HP on research into the technologies that will underpin the next generation of the World Wide Web, specifically on intelligent software that can dramatically improve information retrieval from the Internet and personalise web applications.
At the Royal College of Surgeons' National Centre for Human Proteomics, researchers will partner with Servier, Surgen/Aventis/ Protagen, and Allegro Technologies to study technologies and proteins that can successfully treat diseases of the heart.
At UCC, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre will partner with Proctor & Gamble and Teagasc on research into drug treatment and pharmaceutical products, whose applications can include treatments for Crohn's disease.
The CSET awards also bring to or secure in Ireland three distinguished scientists who will direct the research at each centre. They include biologist Dolores Cahill, who will move from the Max Planck Institute in Germany to the Royal College of Surgeons to direct that research centre; Dieter Fensel, who will lead the centre in NUI Galway; and biologist and clinician scientist Fergus Shanahan, who will direct the centre at UCC.
These grantees received their awards against competition from 23 other applications following a rigorous review process led by international experts. The experts assessed each application's potential level of research quality, collaboration, intellectual breadth, flexibility in responding to new research opportunities, and integration of research and education. SFI also made the awards only after each centre underwent a review that included the experts' assessment of written proposals and oral research presentations and a visit by the experts to each site where a centre would be located.
Dr. William C. Harris, Director General of SFI, said, “SFI has focused such considerable resources on these awards because building top-class research teams between academia and industry is one of the most important steps any country can take in building a lasting indigenous research base and generating ideas, products, and jobs based on knowledge. More importantly, our future depends on the harnessing of ideas and the creativity of talented researchers in Ireland. I am excited by the talent and ideas supported by these three initial CSETs.”
Even as these awards are being made, SFI is planning to invest aggressively in more centres. The Foundation issued its second call for proposals for its next round of CSET awards earlier this year. Thirty-seven scientists formally indicated they would submit proposals, which are due by May 9, 2003.
(A copy of this press release is also available on the Departments website @ )
| CENTRE | DESCRIPTION | PARTNERS | DIRECTOR | FUNDING APPROVED |
| Digital Enterprise Research Centre—NUI Galway | Working on the technologies that will underpin the next generation of the World Wide Web. Their work will involve developing “semantic web technology” - the next generation of intelligent software to facilitate information retrieval from the internet and personalize web applications. | HP | Prof. Dieter Fensel | 12million over five years. |
| National Centre for Human Proteomics—Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. | Specialising in
the technologies and proteins that can successfully treat
diseases of the heart. The team will focus on the identification and characterisation of proteins involved in cardiovascular disease to aid in the developmental of new pharmaceuticals and therapies. |
Servier, Surgen/Aventis/ Protagen, Allegro Technologies | Dr. Dolores Cahill | 13.5million over five years. |
| Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre—UCC | Working on
research in drug treatment and pharmaceutical products.
Applications for their work can include Crohn's disease
and Irritable bowel syndrome. These will elucidate and exploit molecular signalling underlying host-bacteria interactions in the gut, leading to possible developments of new/improved anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory therapies. |
Proctor & Gamble, Alimentary Health, Teagasc | Prof. Fergus Shanahan | 16.5million over five years. |
Under the National Development Plan (NDP) 2000-2006, a sum of _646 million has been allocated to SFI to recruit and retain researchers and research groups capable of developing high-impact, internationally significant discoveries in the fields underpinning iotechnology and information and communications technology.
SFI's investment fund of 646 million is a substantial component of the _2.5 billion that has been set aside for Research, Technological, Development and Innovation activities under the NDP. The Foundation's research investments build upon and are complementary to the infrastructural investments made under the plan through the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions operated by the Higher Education Authority.
ENDS
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