Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris has announced an investment of €28.5 million across 53 research projects to support Ireland’s emerging research talent.
The projects are funded through the SFI-IRC Pathway programme, a new collaborative initiative between Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Irish Research Council (IRC) to support early career research across all disciplines and to encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Of the 53 projects supported under the first round of this new partnership programme, 36 projects will be supported in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and 17 will be supported in arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS). The awards will enable postdoctoral researchers to conduct independent research for a four–year period and will provide funding for a postgraduate student who will be primarily supervised by the awardee.
Announcing the new investment, Minister Harris said: "I am thrilled to announce these exciting new research projects, which allow researchers to advance their work and further develop their careers towards becoming the next generation of research leaders in Ireland. It is important that we retain and support our emerging talent across all areas of research, from astronomy, cancer, economics, energy, to health and nutrition."
He said: "Crucially, this fund focuses on the representation of female researchers in the higher education system. We want to continue to increase the number of females participating in research and funds like this are crucial to helping us achieve this."
Director of Science for Society, Science Foundation Ireland, Dr Ruth Freeman said: "We are delighted to be able to provide this important support to early-career researchers, enabling them to gain the essential skills and experience to develop their track record and become independent research leaders. In partnership with the Irish Research Council, we have been able to support 53 projects, providing resources for excellent researchers and projects across a range of disciplines."
Interim Director of the Irish Research Council, Dr Louise Callinan said: "The IRC is committed to cultivating agile independent researchers and funding excellent research across all disciplines. Through this impactful partnership with Science Foundation Ireland, emerging research talent in both AHSS and STEM will be supported toward becoming established independent researchers and future research leaders."
A specific focus of the programme is increase the representation of female researchers in the higher education system:
- STEM awards by gender: Female (21); Male (15)
- AHSS awards by gender: Male (9); Female (8)
The UCD projects funded are:
Dr Drew Thomas, UCD School of History: Applying Artificial Intelligence to the Printing Press: Transforming Visual Communication During the Protestant Reformation (€477,455)
Dr Robert Power, UCD School of Archaeology: The Evolution of Dietary Diversity and the Transition to Agriculture in Europe (€536,482)
Dr Mario Manresa, UCD School of Medicine: Investigating the mediators and mechanisms that govern inflammatory responses on fibroblasts and the impact of fibroblast-macrophage interactions in inflammatory bowel disease (€552,500)
Dr Chris Kavanagh, UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics: Perturbative Analysis of the Two Body Problem in General Relativity in the Small Mass-Ratio Limit (€519,548)
Dr Lingli Zhou, UCD School of Earth Sciences: Controls on high-grade stratiform Co mineralisation in the Central African Copperbelt (CRITICAL) (€551,900)
Dr Monica De Gaetano, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science: Synthetic Lipoxin-A4 mimetics: novel therapeutic approaches to target residual inflammatory risk in Atherosclerosis-Associated Diabetes Complications (€552,201)
Dr Junli Xu, UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering: Understanding the impacts of micro(nano)plastics released from plastic products using spectral imaging (€550,682)
Dr Elaine Corbett, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering: A new human-computer interface for assessing neuromuscular-cognitive interactions in decision making (€548,186)
Dr Sigrid Dupan, UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering: Sensory feedback for upper limb prosthetics (€543,474)
Dr Eric Conway, UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science: Developing precision medicine strategies to target ASXL1 gain-of-function mutant acute myeloid leukemias (€551,500)
The 53 research projects will be funded through 12 Research Performing Organisations (RPOs): Dublin City University (4); Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (5); Marine Institute (1); Maynooth University (5); Munster Technology University (2); National University of Ireland, Galway (3); RCSI, University of Medicine and Health Sciences (1); Teagasc (1); Trinity College Dublin (8); University College Cork (6); University College Dublin (9) and University of Limerick (8).