Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has selected 14 academics from Ireland and from all around the world to receive €1.7m under the inaugral ETS Walton Visitor Awards to aid them in establishing groundbreaking research in the fields of IT and biotechnology in Irish universities.
The ETS Walton Visitor Awards honour Ireland’s 1951 Nobel laureate physicist. The recipients include researchers from Rice University, Bell Labs, the University of Cape Town and Cambridge University, as well as researchers from universities in Slovakia, Canada and Japan.
The awards, which come from a fund of over €670m available to SFI follow an international merit review of responses to a competition process launched early last year.
The award recipients will spend between three months and one year at host institutions in Ireland and will be expected to conduct research and participate in lectures and conferences in the field that underpin biotechnology and information and communications technology research.
Of the recipients, nine will focus on IT research and five will focus on biotechnology.
By John Kennedy
