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The awardees of this year’s US-Ireland R&D programme share in a bumper fund that is more than twice as generous as 2022’s to celebrate its 17th year.
A research collaboration between Ireland, the US and Northern Ireland is celebrating its 17th year with an investment of €21m.
The US-Ireland R&D programme was inspired by the Good Friday Agreement. It was set up to encourage collaboration and close links between the research communities in the three regions.
This year’s funding boost is one of the highest awards in the programme’s history. A total of 12 awards have been announced, with 27 different research institutions set to benefit from the funding. The boost will support more than 35 research positions in the Republic of Ireland and more than 25 research positions in Northern Ireland.
In 2021, there was a total of €13.5m in funding made available, while last year saw a €9m investment.
The 2023 awardees will be supported over a period of between three and five years. Some of the projects sharing in the €21m award include research in the areas of energy storage and conversion, wearable health diagnostics, 5G and 6G communications and quantum networks.
For some of the Irish teams, this is their second time to receive an award under the scheme.
Prof Brian Rodriguez’s group at University College Dublin has received its second US-Ireland Programme award for work that could lead to the development of computing with low power requirements.
And Dr Patrick McGetrick’s University of Galway research group was awarded its second US-Ireland award for research on robotics in steel building.
Prof Daniel Kilper, director of the Connect SFI Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications, has received his second award for research that aims to develop telecoms systems that support quantum computing.
Other universities in the Republic of Ireland to have netted funding include Dublin City University, Maynooth University and South East Technological University. In Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University in Northern Ireland are this year’s awardees.
The US institutions that these researchers in Ireland and Northern Ireland will be working with include New York University, Harvard Medical School and MIT.
Welcoming today’s (17 March) funding announcement, Philip Nolan, director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) said the awardees’ work “spans both fundamental and applied research and has the potential to greatly benefit our collective societies and economies”.
Along with the Health Research Board, SFI is the other Irish supporting organisation of the US-Ireland scheme. Their counterparts in Northern Ireland are the Department for the Economy and the Health & Social Care R&D Division.
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