[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hree projects from DCU were awarded funding this month from the Science Foundation Ireland for research projects in the areas of sciences, technology, engineering and maths. (STEM)
Each project is currently being led by one member of staff in DCU, Professor Dermot Diamond of Chemical Sciences, Dr Niall Barron of National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology (NICB) and Dr Andrew Way of Computing.
These are just three of 37 projects all over the country that will receive some of the 4.6 million in funding that was awarded by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O’Connor.
Prof. Dermot Diamond hopes to develop a wearable technology that could help the management of diabetes through a contact lens that is read from a smartphone. Dr. Niall Barron seeks to enhance recombinant protein productivity in CHO cells and Dr. Andrew Way wants to create a system for post-editing of machine translation on touch screen devices.
The aim of awarding the 4.6 million to these 37 projects is to make them commercially stable in the future, either as an app for purchasing or as licensable technology.
Dr. Andrew Way commended the awarding of the funding as it allows for “a couple of people to be hired for a year to work on something specific to try to commercialise research prototypes developed in our ADAPT labs here in DCU.”
He also commented on the fact that two other DCU researchers received funding for their research projects, “it shows that DCU really is the University of Enterprise and that the Science Foundation Ireland recognise the great talent there is across DCU in a number of disciplines.”
Speaking at the announcement , Prof. Mark Ferguson, Director General of the Science Foundation Ireland said “Science Foundation Ireland is committed to investing in the translation of world-class research from the laboratory to market.”
Lucy Mangan