Trinity research groups awarded funding in US-Ireland Research Programme
Four Trinity research groups have been named among 12 projects to receive funding under the US-Ireland Research Programme.
The recent announcement of the joint investment of approx. €21 million marks the highest number of annual awards ever made through the programme, which came about as a result of the Good Friday Agreement and which is delivered through a tripartite research and development partnership between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the USA.
The four Trinity projects are led by Dr Arman Farhang, Dr Lewys Jones and Prof Daniel Kilper and Prof Jagdish K. Vij. Trinity is also a partner institution in another project, with Prof Colin Doherty heading up the Trinity partnership.
This year’s awards, which celebrates its 17th year in operation, span 27 research institutions and will support more than 35 research positions in the Republic of Ireland, for three to five years. Projects receiving funding include research in the areas of energy storage and conversion, wearable health diagnostics, robotics, 5G communications and quantum networks.
Dr Arman Farhang, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Engineering, will work with colleagues in Queen’s University Belfast and University of Utah on a project which will explore an emerging communication paradigm where the propagation of the electromagnetic waves is manipulated in a controllable fashion.
Dr Lewys Jones, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Physics, will work with colleagues in Queen’s University Belfast, Georgia Institute of Technology and University of South Florida on a project which aims to advance our fundamental understanding of antiferroelectricity – a property of a material which can strengthen or weaken depending on parameters such as temperature, pressure, or growth method.
Daniel Kilper Professor of Future Communication and Networks in the School of Engineering and Director of CONNECT, the SFI Research Centre for Future Networks, will lead a project that aims to realize telecommunication systems that support quantum computing.
Partner institutions on the project are Dublin City University, South East Technological University Tyndall National Institute, University College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Chicago and University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Prof Jagdish K. Vij, School of Engineering, will work with colleagues in Queen’s University Belfast and Kent State University on a project which aims to enhance our of the relationships between molecular structure and liquid crystal properties and to facilitate future applications of these materials as photonic, energy storage, and switching devices.
Additionally, Colin Doherty, Professor of Epileptology at Trinity’s School of Medicine and Director of Epilepsy Service at St James’s Hospital is a co-applicant with colleagues in Ulster University and Texas A&M University on a project led by Prof Robert Forster, Dublin City University. The team are developing a low-cost multi-analyte sensor technology to detect the levels of therapeutics in blood and improve the lives of people with epilepsy.
Prof Sinéad Ryan, Dean of Research, Trinity congratulated the awardees:
“I am very pleased to congratulate the Trinity research groups who have received funding as part of the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme. Trinity’s Living Research Excellence Strategy encourages us to build the wider collaborative networks we need to do our research, and these projects are excellent examples of this. By working with our international colleagues, we are able to harness all of our collective expertise for the greater good.”
The Programme is supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Health Research Board (HRB) in the Republic of Ireland; the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA; and the Department for the Economy (DfE) and the Health & Social Care R&D Division in Northern Ireland.
Prof Philip Nolan, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland welcomed the announcement, saying: “The growth of the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme since its inception, highlights the significant value of our international collaborations. I am particularly pleased to see the evolution of a number of the groups that have now won multiple US-Ireland awards. I am delighted to congratulate the award recipients and their collaborators on their work which spans both fundamental and applied research and has the potential to greatly benefit our collective societies and economies.”
“The U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership program plays an important role in pushing the boundaries of frontier research beyond any borders. This unique research partnership model aims to generate, at speed and scale, valuable discoveries and innovations which are transferable to the marketplace or will lead to enhancements in health, climate resilience and telecommunications to improve our world. I congratulate the awardees and look forward to seeing how their outcomes contribute to successfully addressing global challenges,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.
Mark Lee, Interim Director of Higher Education at Northern Ireland’s Department for the Economy, said: “International research partnerships have a key role to play in driving forward Northern Ireland’s vision for a ‘10x Economy’ to deliver economic prosperity and a better quality of life for all our people. The US-Ireland R&D Partnership, as a flagship trans-Atlantic initiative, is playing a crucial role in the delivery of this vision, supporting Northern Ireland-based researchers to make a global impact through the development of new and ground-breaking technologies that can benefit all right across society.”