Image: Clare Keogh
Tyndall’s latest annual report highlights the institute’s huge success in Europe, with 60 projects worth €45m funded to date.
Tyndall National Institute had record success last year, with annual income exceeding €50m, up 19pc on the previous year.
The institute published it annual report for 2023 yesterday (3 September), showing that it received €47m in funding for 52 new research projects and €8m in industry funding.
“By every measure, 2023 was the strongest year in the 40-year history of Tyndall,” said CEO of Tyndall Prof William Scanlon. “New records were set across every dimension, including research income, income from industry, European Union (EU) research funding, and staff and student numbers.”
The deep-tech research centre based at University College Cork (UCC) is one of Ireland’s largest research and technology organisations and specialises in electronics and photonics. Last year, it reached a headcount of about 530, its largest ever, with 160 postgraduate students.
Along with the report, Tyndall announced that it had reached a significant milestone by securing €45m in funding for 60 projects under the Horizon Europe framework to date, with 23 projects granted funding in 2023 alone. These projects have ranged from developing sustainable, next-generation semiconductor chips to creating a biosensor platform that uses cellular responses to detect environmental pollutants.
Tyndall’s success is a “testament to Ireland’s growing strength in research and innovation”, said Patrick O’Donovan, TD, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.
“Tyndall’s commitment to advancing deep-tech technologies and supporting early-career researchers is vital to our national strategy, Impact 2030, which seeks to position Ireland as a global leader in addressing key societal challenges.”
Last year, Tyndall researchers teamed up with medical device giant Boston Scientific to develop a new micro sensor to support cancer treatment. At the time, Scanlon said the collaboration would strengthen Tyndall’s position as a “world leader in deep-tech research”.
Horizon Europe
Since the 80s, EU programmes have granted European organisations more than €185bn for science and innovation research and Ireland has bagged more than €3bn of this funding to date.
In 2023, a total of 464 grants were signed by Irish organisations under the Horizon framework, a slight drop from the year before with 548 grants.
The latest figures show that Irish organisations have been offered €782.6m in funding under the current Horizon framework running from 2021 till 2027. Previously, Ireland secured a total of €1.2bn under Horizon 2020, the older iteration of this framework running from 2014 to 2020.
Horizon’s current budget of €95bn is aimed at research and innovation in the EU to tackle global challenges, and improve innovation and the EU’s industry competitiveness.
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