BUSINESS
SFI pours EUR42m into new centres
01-05-2003
by John Cradden
Around 150 new jobs are to be created at universities in Cork, Galway and Dublin thanks to large research grants from the Science Foundation Ireland.
The Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Harney announced on Thursday that awards totalling EUR42 million would be granted to establish three brand new research centres for science, engineering and technology (CSETs).
Researchers at University College, Cork, NUI Galway and the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin will use the funds to establish research partnerships with scientists and engineers in industry.
This is the largest single set of grants awarded to date by the SFI. "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 Tanaiste said.
The SFI, which is responsible for administering the EUR635 million Technology Foresight Fund, is currently funding research projects in Ireland to a total of almost EUR150 million.
The investments in CSETs are intended to last for five years and each of the centres will receive at least EUR12 million each along with support from the industry partners, who are required to add 20 percent to SFI's support for these awards in the form of funding, personnel or equipment. The three centres will together employ approximately 150 researchers, graduate students and others as a result of this funding.
The new centres will link faculty at the universities with their counterparts from HP, Proctor and Gamble and Servier. Irish companies involved in these partnerships include Surgen, Alimentary Health and Allegro Technologies.
At NUI Galway, the Digital Enterprise Research Centre will partner with Hewlett-Packard on research into the technologies that will form the basis of the next generation of the World Wide Web. More specifically, it will focus on intelligent software that can improve information retrieval from the Internet and personalise Web applications.
Researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons' National Centre for Human Proteomics 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 work with Proctor & Gamble and Teagasc on research into drug treatment and pharmaceutical products, whose applications can include treatments for Crohn's disease.
The research at each centre will be lead by three distinguished scientists. 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.
The SFI says that it plans to invest "aggressively" in more research centres. It issued its second call for proposals for its next round of CSET awards earlier this year, for which received expressions of interest from 37 scientists to send proposals, which are due by 09 May 2003.
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