NUIG’s digital research centre is to benefit from a €23 million cash injection which will be phased over five years and is hoped will create new jobs.
The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI ) is one of three centres for Science, Engineering, and Technology (CSETs ) to get a slice of more than €60 million funding which will be provided by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI ) and the industry.
Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment, Mary Coughlan TD recently announced substantial awards totalling €45.7 million over five years through the SFI. This investment provides second-term funding to three existing world-class research CSETs and will be supplemented by an additional contribution from the industry of €14.5 million bringing the overall investment to some €60 million.
The CSET at NUI Galway has been guaranteed €15 million in state funding from SFI and €8 million from eight companies in Galway, Westmeath, and America. The DERI team, led by its director Professor Stefan Decker, is researching technologies that will underpin the next generation of the World Wide Web – the Semantic Web.
The other two CSETs are: Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC ) based at UCC and the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN ) which is hosted by TCD.
Announcing the awards, Deputy Coughlan said: “All three centres have been playing a pivotal role in contributing to the Government’s goal of building a world-class research base in Ireland, and developing our human capital to support economic competitiveness. Today [Wednesday] is an endorsement of this achievement to date, and marks the beginning of the next chapter for each individual researcher and their respective teams.”
