News and Events
- SBFE research fellow Xiaohui Lin receives the MSCA DOROTHY COFUND award
- Upskill with UCD’s engineering micro-credentials
- Minister O’Donovan announces funding boost for early career researchers
- Recent Lab visit by UCD Engineering & Architecture to Sheffield University Diamond Centre
- UCD Stormwater Runoff Research featured in Nicola Haines Team
- Madeleine Lowery among UCD Researchers recognised in SFI Frontiers for the Future Awards
- UCD’s LaNua Medical Wins Big Ideas Award at Enterprise Ireland’s Start-Up Day 2024
- Robotics Competition
- Congratulations to All the Winners of this years NovaUCD Awards
- Irish National Doctoral Research Cohort on Floating Offshore Wind Dynamic Cables is formed
- UCD and Northeastern University extend and deepen long-standing partnership with five collaborative research projects
- EPA announces €14.3M in new research funding
- Arup Scholarship Awards 2024
- UCD names new Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
- Project promoting safe staffing in the healthcare system wins UCD Research Impact Competition
- VOICE Project Launches to Shape Tomorrow's Sustainability
- Archives
- 2023 News Archive
- 2022 News Archive
- 2021 News Archive
- 2020 News Archive
- 2019 News Archive
- Students celebrate victory at the ‘Shaping Your Future’ 3D printing innovation challenge
- Takeda Dunboyne Biologics Scholarship Paves career path for UCD Biopharma Engineering Students
- IT Tralee, UCD and Teagasc Partner to Launch First Level 9 Post Graduate Diploma in Bioeconomy with Business.
- BioSimulytics Wins University College Dublin’s 2019 Start- Up of the Year Award
- UCD researchers named among world's top 1% of influential scientists
- Chinese Senior Diplomats Visit UCD Food Engineering Laboratories
- UCD shortlisted for five 2019 Knowledge Transfer Ireland Impact Awards
- Eight UCD schools win Athena SWAN awards for gender equality commitment
- RIBA names Farrell and McNamara firm as 2020 Royal Gold Medal winner
- CIGRE Young Member Showcase
- UCD Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering degrees receive IChemE accreditation
- Two interns in the School of Civil Engineering showcase their research into Irish roads.
- Bristol-Myers Squibb-UCD Strategic Partnership
- UCD Researchers Develop a “Pallet-Integrated” Wireless Dynamometer for CNC Machines
- 3D printing competition invites you to ‘Shape the Future’ for a sustainable world
- UCD Researcher Awarded ERC Proof-of-Concept Funding for Parkinson’s Disease Project
- Professor Da-Wen Sun tops the World Ranking in ESI Highly Cited Papers
- UCD to partner RTÉ Radio 1’s DAVIS NOW LECTURE 2019 series: "Making Home"
- UCD leading €2.1m Horizon 2020 project to tackle climate change impact on food safety
- NIBRT announce collaboration with University College Dublin, to re-design the MEngSc Biopharmaceutical Engineering
- Timber and Harbours: Insights into Sustainability in Design and Construction
- Ministers Humphreys and Halligan announce six finalists competing for €1 million SFI Future Innovator Prize
- Congratulations to Amanda Gibney and Michael Bruen on their fellowships!
- Mechanical Engineering Lecturer is Keynote Speaker at UCD Annual Teaching and Learning Conference
- Optimising the Last Mile of 5G Wireless Networks
- A Living Lab Approach for more Sustainable Cities
- Sanofi Future Female Leader Scholarships awarded to two UCD students
- Controlling Moving and Shaking for Better Space Travel and Horse Training
- Professor Sheila O’Donnell becomes first Irish architect inducted into American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Ministers announce the nomination of Professor Peter Clinch as Chairperson Designate of the Board of Science Foundation Ireland
- Seven Review Papers by Professor Da-Wen Sun Published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition
- Accounting for Environmental Impact in the Bioeconomy
- Study by University College Dublin Reveals Toyota Hybrids Drive Over 60% of the Time in Zero Emissions Mode
- New Perspectives on River Models
- Engineering design to solve long-term problems in energy storage and medicine
- An innovative program called TRUSS aims to protect Europe’s infrastructure for decades to come
- A Boost for Wireless and Energy-Harvesting Technologies
- UCD Professor of Planning, Mark Scott, launches a major new book on rural planning
- Towards Mass Production for Precision Micro/Nano Devices
- Assessing the Internal Health of Earthworks for more Stable Infrastructure
- Research to improve welding process for manufacturing industries
- SFI Starting Investigator Research Grants for three UCD academics
- Dual BE with Chang'an University
- UCD academics named as two of Ireland’s five new Cultural Ambassadors
- Engineering Solutions to Offset Waste Problems
- Chemical giant DuPont acquires UCD spin-out OxyMem
- 2018 News Archive
- 2017 News Archive
- 2016 News Archive
- Building the State
- A Centenary Celebration
Ministers Humphreys and Halligan announce six finalists competing for €1 million SFI Future Innovator Prize
Wednesday, 5 June, 2019
Congratulating the shortlisted teams, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, said: “On behalf of the Government, I want to congratulate the six teams who have made it to the second round of the Future Innovator Prize competition. We launched the initiative last year to encourage bright minds across the country to work together to identify major challenges facing Ireland’s society, and to propose creative solutions. It is very exciting to see so many innovative ideas coming through and I look forward to seeing their ideas develop further over the coming months.”
Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan TD, said: “It is heartening to see the excellent standard of the six teams who have progressed to the second round of the SFI Future Innovator Prize competition. Their passion for their fields reflects their dedication to improving Ireland’s economy and society through research, collaboration and inventiveness. I am confident that they will continue to impress us as the competition goes on.”
The challenge areas and issues to be addressed by the six finalists are as follows:
Challenge Area: Reducing the Burden of Sepsis
Dr Elaine Spain (Analytical Chemistry, DCU); Dr Kellie Adamson (Diagnostics and Therapeutics and Biomaterials Science, DCU); Prof Gerald Curley, (Sepsis Lead, RCSI Network of Hospitals, Beaumont Hospital)
(opens in a new window)Project - SepTec: Improving Outcomes for Sepsis Patients.
Challenge Area: Harnessing Gene Editing to Treat Rare Diseases such as Epidermolysis bullosa (EB)
Prof Wenxin Wang, Dr Irene-Lara Sáez and Mr Jonathan O’Keeffe-Ahern (Charles Institute of Dermatology, UCD); Dr Nan Zhang (Mechanical and Materials Engineering, UCD); Dr Sinead Hickey (Research Manager, DEBRA Ireland)
(opens in a new window)Project - A disruptive, non‐viral gene editing platform technology for treating genetic conditions.
Challenge Area: Enabling Next Generation Biological Imaging
Prof Dominic Zerulla (Physics and Plasmonics, UCD); Dr Dimitri Scholz (Biology and Director of the Conway Imaging facilities, UCD); Peter Doyle (consulting the European Commission with the Brussels Photonics Team on strategic innovation and business development)
(opens in a new window)Project - Real‐time imaging of nanoscale biological processes via plasmonically enabled nanopixel arrays.
Challenge Area: Enabling Better Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Dr Eric Moore (Analytical Chemistry, TNI/UCC); Mr. Martin O'Sullivan (Lead Surgeon, BreastCheck Southern Unit and UCC); Liosa O'Sullivan (Patient Advocate)
(opens in a new window)Project - Development of a technology for clinicians to improve the breast cancer diagnostic pathway through real time point of care detection of breast disease.
Challenge Area: Reducing the Burden of Chronic Pain
Dr Alison Liddy (Biomedical Engineer and Chemist, NUI Galway); Dr Martin O'Halloran (Senior Lecturer in Medical Electronics, NUI Galway); Dr Chris Maharaj (Consultant Anaesthetist & Pain Specialist, University Hospital Galway)
(opens in a new window)Project - A novel hydrogel to address chronic pain in Irish patients.
Challenge Area: Minimising Hospital Waiting-lists and Optimising Healthcare Capacity
Prof Barry O'Sullivan and Helmut Simonis (School of Computer Science and Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University College Cork); Dr Jane Bourke (Economics, Technology Adoption and Health Care Innovation, University College Cork); Prof Martin Curley (Director, HSE Digital Academy)
The SFI Future Innovator Prize, funded by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation through Science Foundation Ireland, is part of an overall government plan to cultivate challenge-based funding in Ireland. Challenge-based funding is a solution focused approach to funding research that uses prizes and other incentives to direct innovation activities at specific problems. The SFI Future Innovator Prize challenges the country’s best and brightest unconventional thinkers and innovators to create novel, potentially disruptive technologies in collaboration with societal stakeholders and end-users.
The programme aligns with the Government’s Future Jobs Ireland initiative, beginning to prepare for jobs of the future now through ensuring that our economy is well positioned to tackle obstacles and continue transforming for the better.
The competing teams are led by academic researchers and a “Societal Impact Champion” drawn from a range of disciplines and stakeholder groups such as industry and civil society in an effort to support convergent and collaborative problem-solving. Competing teams come from University College Dublin (UCD), Dublin City University (DCU), NUI Galway (NUI Galway), University College Cork (UCC), and Tyndall National Institute (TNI), with involvement of a number of national agencies, hospitals and world leading SFI Research Centres.