Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton and Minister for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock today announced €47 million in funding for pioneering research initiatives, delivered by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, through the Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Programme.
The Programme will provide funding over a three to five-year period, for 36 research projects involving over 200 researchers. Funding for each project will range from €400,000 to €3.1 million.
The projects were selected by competitive peer review by 400 international scientists.
The successful 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.
Two research projects have been selected as part of the SFI Teagasc Future Agri-Food Partnership to be co-funded by Teagasc. These research projects will focus on pregnancy testing in dairy cattle and developing precision technology for sustainable pasture based farming. A further three projects in Future Agri-Food will be funded by SFI focusing on sustainable agriculture, fertility in cattle and microbiology for food.
Prof 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.
“Of 210 applications, 36 projects were successful – a similar success rate to other international research funding programmes. A further five projects were also deemed scientifically excellent and impactful by the international review panel and are on a reserve list to be funded, if budgets permit later in the year.”
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