DCU Success in New SFI Research Centres
DCU’s success in SFI Research Centres competition
SFI launched 7 new research centres, with a total investment of €300M (€200M from SFI, €100M from industry). DCU staff are involved in three of these centres, focusing on Big Data, Drug Synthesis/Crystallisation and Photonics. Each of the centres will be formally launched at separate events later in the year but in the interim, please see below a brief overview of the 3 centres with DCU PI’s; namely, INSIGHT, SSPC and I-PIC.
It’s a great achievement for all involved, with these SFI Research Centres set to play an important role in the Research and Innovation landscape both nationally and internationally over the coming years.
INSIGHT
INSIGHT will start on 1 July 2013, for 6 years, with initial funding of more than €75m from SFI and industry. This is the largest single investment in science research in Ireland ever.
INSIGHT will be Ireland's National Data Analytics and Big Data Research Centre and within DCU it builds upon much of the work of the CLARITY CSET. Its focus is on the application of big data and data analytics to connected health and the discovery economy.
It is a collaboration between DCU, UCD, NUIG, UCC, and also with involvement from NUIM and TCD.
DCU people directly involved in the initial phase are Dermot Diamond, Cathal Gurrin, Kieran Moran, Niall Moyna, Noel O'Connor, Mark Roantree, Alan Smeaton and Ray Walshe, with others across campus already exploiting further funding leveraged under INSIGHT.
Synthesis & Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre (SSPC)
The SSPC2 Centre will aim to better understand mechanisms, control processes and predict outcomes for the efficient and environmentally sustainable production of safe medicines. This will be achieve by utilising a “molecule-to-medicine” approach that encompasses chemical synthesis, crystal engineering, and drug production and manufacture.
The SSPC2 Centre will continue the work of its forerunner, the SSPC Strategic Reseach Cluster, in providing critical support to the national pharmaceutical industry, which is the most significant industrial sector in Ireland, directly employing over 25,000 people and creating revenue that totaled 56% of all exports in 2012. Ireland has attracted 13 of the 15 largest pharmaceutical multinational companies to its shores and SSPC2 is already working with many of these companies to develop new and improved processing technologies, and help to retain the economic value of important drugs, many of which are soon to lose their patent protection.
The total funding is €31.7M, with €22M from SFI and €9.7M from industry.
The SSPC partner institutions are UL, UCD, TCD, UCC and DCU, with an additional 16 industry partners.
Dr Nick Gathergood is the DCU PI and will be leading the “New technologies for cleaner processes” project. The DCU project will focus on biodegradable ionic liquid solvents.
I-PIC
The Irish Photonic Integration Research Centre (I-PIC) will address the challenge of photonic integration. Photonics, the generation, manipulation and utilization of light, is an important enabling technology that underpins many areas such as future networks, communications systems and medical devices. The development of photonic integrated circuits that have many devices with multiple functions integrated on a single chip is key to photonics having the same societal impact that electronics has had over the last 50 years. I-PIC will focus on specific applications in the Communications and Biomedical sciences.
The IPIC team includes researchers from Tyndall National Institute, UCC, Cork Institute of Technology and DCU.
The two DCU PIs are Prof. Colette McDonagh from the School of Physics and Prof. Liam Barry from the School of Electronic Engineering. Prof. McDonagh will specifically work on the Biomedical side of the IPIC research programme while Prof. Barry's work will focus on the development of photonic integration technologies for high speed communication systems.