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Each team will receive up to €500,000 to develop their research with a further €2m in prize funding up for grabs in the final phase of the competition.
More than €6m in funding has been announced for the final cohort of the National Challenge Fund finalists today (25 March).
As part of the National Challenge Fund, 10 research teams from across Ireland will each receive up to €500,000 of growth-phase funding over the next 12 months.
The National Challenge Fund is a €65m programme first announced in 2022 and funded by the EU. The participating projects aim to drive innovation in the green transition and digital transformation.
The funding was announced by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless, TD, who said the finalists are “exemplars of the positive impact” research funding can deliver.
“I look forward to seeing these research teams progress their projects over the next year as they continue to support Ireland’s digital transformation and green transition.”
The teams will now spend the next year advancing prototyping activities and demonstrating how their work can create tangible value.
In addition to the €500,000 funding per team, the finalists will have the opportunity to bag additional funding in the final phase of the programme, where €2m is up for grabs.
The National Challenge Fund is managed by Research Ireland. The teams are split across two challenge areas. The first is focused on sustainable communities, which includes challenges such as transportation infrastructure maintenance, waste polyester recycling and sustainable construction methods.
The second area focuses on future food systems, which examines challenges such as disease management in aquaculture, mitigating crop losses and sustainable alternative protein sources.
The researchers from across the teams come from University College Dublin (UCD), Dublin City University (DCU), Atlantic Technological University (ATU), University of Galway and Trinity College Dublin.
EU commissioner Michael McGrath said he’s delighted to see innovative examples of the potential EU funding can bring to the research teams.
“These teams’ work will help address some of the most pressing challenges for society and help ensure a just transition for all as Ireland and the European Union continue our journey to a carbon neutral future,” he said.
The winning teams and lead researchers are listed below.
- GEOMETRIC, led by Dr Shane Donohue at UCD
- PUreTex, led by Prof Susan Kelleher at DCU
- Platform4MMC, led by Dr Oliver Kinnane at UCD
- EMBRACE, led by Dr Myra Lydon at University of Galway
- CONUNDRUM, led by Prof Niamh Moore-Cherry at UCD
- FungiTech, led by Prof Fiona Doohan at UCD
- NanoSA, led by Dr Niall Maloney at ATU
- SINFERT , led by Dr Kirill Nikitin at UCD
- AgSENSE, led by Prof David O’Connor at DCU
- Agri-Immanence, led by Prof Charles Spillane, University of Galway
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