DCU wins €7 million from latest EU research programme

One of the biggest winners was DCU’s School of Health and Human Performance. Dr Kieran Moran and his team Catherine Woods, Noel O'Connor Suzanne Little, co-applicants Noel McCaffrey, Niall Moyna, Regina Connelly and Paul Davis is leading a project, to examine technology-enabled behavioural change to help those with cardio-vascular disease better manage their condition by themselves and lead a healthy lifestyle. In addition to project leader DCU, the research group involves eight additional partners: four other Universities, three SMEs and one hospital. Total funding for the project came to €5 million. 

Dubbed ‘PATHway’, the project is underpinned by the concept of ‘physical activity towards health’ – hence ‘PATH’. It uses a platform of sensors placed in the home, which are connected to the internet so that patients can take part in cardiac rehabilitation exercise programmes remotely from their own living rooms. The platform will also provide individualised rehabilitation programmes that use regular, socially inclusive exercise sessions. 

Dr Moran called the award “a unique opportunity to utilise DCU’s significant multi-disciplinary expertise in rehabilitation exercise, behavioural change, sensor-based technology enabled platforms, business and innovation, to help tackle cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of premature death and disability world-wide.” Currently, only 5-10 per cent of patients engage regularly with community-based structured programmes. “We believe that our home-based PATHway system has the potential to help the other 90 per cent,” he added.  

In another notable win, DCU’s Dr Andrew Kellett is co-ordinating a €3.7 million gene therapy project recently awarded under the Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action - Innovative Training Network funding programme. Gene therapy is expected to play a key role in next-generation medicine by correcting the underlying genetic causes of disease, which it’s expected will facilitate personalised medicine. The objectives of the research are to train 14 students in biomaterials development. The project’s partners are drawn from Germany, the UK, Italy, Greece and Czech Republic.  

Dr Donnacha Ó Beacháin is the designated lead researcher in the €3.8 million Horizon 2020 project on the Caspian region. The consortium involves 19 partners and is led by the Institute for International Conflict Resolution at DCU. Dr Ó Beacháin lectures on post-Soviet politics, Irish studies and foreign policy, and is Director of Research at DCU’s School of Law and Government, 

DCU also won funding in a further nine projects where it was either a coordinator or partner. The grants cover research across a diverse range of areas such as a self-organising, self-managing heterogeneous cloud technology, and mammalian systems biotechnology.   

The EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, has previously outlined the opportunities Horizon 2020 offers industry and researchers in Ireland. Overall, Irish researchers and innovators hope to obtain €1 billion in funding during the lifetime of the programme.