The Government is to provide funding totalling €60m, dedicated to 85 pioneering research initiatives. The funding will be administered through Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) Investigator Programme and will support 250 researcher positions across 85 pioneering research projects to further accelerate Ireland’s recovery through innovation. This investment will also indirectly support further research initiatives and many more researchers by leveraging significant additional funding from other sources including competitive European research calls.
The projects being funded have links to 36 companies thus far and the potential for creating jobs is a critical factor. The individual research projects funded range in size and scale from approximately €200,000 to €2m over the next five years and cover a broad range of scientific topics including, for example: computer-assisted neurosurgery; animation; inflammatory diseases; mathematics for enterprise, science and technology; Hepatitis C; advanced materials and manufacturing; ICT; and tissue engineering.
The SFIs Investigator Programme is designed to support the development of world-class research and human capital in the areas of science, engineering and mathematics that demonstrably support and underpin enterprise competitiveness and societal development in Ireland.
The investigations cover a broad range of topics and each project “has great potential to impact positively on Ireland’s future both economically and societally”, according to Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of SFI.