Grow Phase’ funding of over €9 million has been announced today for 16 research teams under the National Challenge Fund – a €65 million competitive programme which aims to deliver solutions for major environmental and societal issues. 

Eight UCD researchers are amongst the winning project teams. Established under the Government’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), funded by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, the National Challenge Fund has supported 96 teams to identify problems related to Ireland’s Green Transition and Digital Transformation and collaborate directly with those stakeholders most affected by them to create real and tangible solutions.  

Celine Fitzgerald, Interim CEO, Research Ireland, said: “The National Challenge Fund is a solution-focused approach that encourages teams to work across discipline and sectoral boundaries, enabling collaboration between academic researchers, industry and government stakeholders and end-users, and ensuring they are developing innovative and implementable solutions. I wish all the finalist teams success as they continue to develop their unique research projects.”

The teams receiving funding as part of this announcement are split across four challenge areas:

• Energy Innovation Challenge - seeks solutions that will accelerate Ireland’s transition to a clean and secure energy system.
• Digital for Resilience Challenge - seeks solutions that will enhance Ireland’s capabilities in crisis prediction & response.
• Healthy Environment for All Challenge - seeks solutions to ensure clean and healthy air, water and soil for humans, animals, and plants.
• OurTech Challenge - seeks solutions to enhance the connections between government, communities, and people.

Each team is being awarded up to €500,000 funding for the next 12 months. They will spend the next year advancing prototyping activities and demonstrating how the solutions they are developing can create tangible value by addressing the specific societal needs identified and refined in the previous phases of the funding programme. The teams selected will have the opportunity for additional funding in the final phase of the programme, where prize funding of between €1-2 million will be on offer to the most competitive teams under each Challenge.

The UCD teams and collaborations are:

Energy Innovation Challenge

Prof Dominic Zerulla and co-lead Dr Silas O’Toole, UCD School of Physics: PicoGlaze – Dynamic, sustainable, glazing technology enabling modulation of solar heat flow, significantly reducing carbon emissions from the built environment.

Prof Vikram Pakrashi, UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering  and co-lead Dr James Sweeney, University of Limerick: GREEN-GRID – Real-time prediction of GREEN electricity generation potential from renewables for optimised GRID management.

Healthy Environment for All Challenge 

Prof Cormac Murphy, UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science and co-lead Prof James Sullivan, UCD School of Chemistry: PFAS Cleanup – A sustainable solution for the disposal of PFAS-containing Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF).

Dr Jiayao Chen, UCD School of Architecture, Planning, Environmental Policy and co-lead Dr David O’Connor, Dublin City University: BOHEMIAN – Biological and chemical aerosol monitoring and modelling.

OurTech Challenge

Dr Philip Crowe, UCD School of Architecture, Planning, Environmental Policy and co-lead Dr Gavin McArdle, UCD School of Computer Science: Vacancy Map Ireland (VMI) – Development of an open geospatial data model for vacancy using proxy datasets, GIS and AI.

For a full list of winning research teams visit the Research Ireland website.