Three Irish technology projects are to receive €11 million in research funding from the European Union. The projects have been selected in the last round of investment from the European Innovation Council (EIC) ‘Pathfinder Open’ Pilot, funded under Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme.

One of the projects is led by Waterford IT, another by University College Cork, while partners in the three projects include the RCSI, the UCC Academy Designated Activity Company, Trinity College Dublin and the Tyndall Institute.

Successful Irish projects

  1. Waterford IT is to lead a €4.4 million project for treating neurodegenerative disorders. The project involves 6 other partners including the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. RRIME ‘A Personalised Living Cell Synthetic Computing Circuit for Sensing and Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders’ project aims to provide a transformational diagnostic-therapeutic treatment for epilepsy and other neurological diseases that feature disrupted neuronal network function.
  2. UCC is leading a €3.4 million project with 4 other partners including the UCC Academy Designated Activity Company. ‘The Recycling of waste heat through the Application of Nanofluidic ChannelS: Advances in the Conversion of Thermal to Electrical energy’ project aims to develop a new proof-of-concept nanofluidic platform technology based on the flux of ions in nanochannels; leading to a breakthrough in versatile and sustainable low-grade heat waste energy harvesting and storage.
  3. Tyndall Institute and Trinity College are partners in the €3.2 million project led by Italy's Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche. ‘Gated INTERfaces for FAST information processing’ project will develop a novel technological platform for the voltage control of interfacial magnetism to increase the speed of information processing.

In this round, the EIC selected 58 proposals out of 902 applications and awarded them with a total of €191 million or research funding.

The highest number of successful projects come from Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland, with almost 30% led by female researchers and 26% classed as ‘green technologies’ set to support the objectives of the European Green Deal.