Success for DCU researchers in Irish Research Council enterprise programmes

Dublin City University has welcomed today’s announcement by the Irish Research Council that five projects led by DCU researchers have been awarded funding under the IRC’s enterprise programmes.

The IRC partners with around 70 organisations each year, ranging from multinational corporations to SMEs, public-sector agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), under its Enterprise Partnership Schemes and Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme. Through these co-funded programmes, postgraduate or postdoctoral researchers develop new, advanced knowledge and skills linked with industry and employer needs.

The programmes train early-career researchers for the diversity of employment opportunities in industry, the public sector and the non-government sectors. For enterprise and employers, the schemes provide a low-risk, flexible route to research collaboration and identifying new talent for innovation. The Enterprise Partnership Scheme provides researchers with the opportunity to pursue research in collaboration with enterprise while based at a higher education institution, while the Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme supports researchers to undertake research based in and employed by their employment partner.

Details of the five DCU researchers awarded funding are:

• Lorna Crean who will be based with Dublin Simon Community and conduct research on the desire for control in homelessness and addiction
• Kerron Ó Luain who will be based with enterprise partner An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta ags Gaelscolaíochta (COGG) and will commence a research project on The Gaelscoil Movement, 1973-93: An Oral and Digital History of Grassroots Language Activism
• Paula Dolan who will be based with Dublin City Council and will be conducting research entitled: Towards an appropriate Irish legal Infrastructure for social economy enterprises - an analysis of the relationships between legal infrastructure, organisational performance and public policy objectives 
• Niall Ashfield will be based with Clinical Cancer Research Trust to investigate the combination of tyrosine kinase inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates in HER2+ cancers
• Kanishk Verma will be based with Google and working on a project entitled Data-driven Toolkit for Combating Cyberbullying in Teens

Announcing the investment today, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, said: “Talent and innovation are key priorities of my department and will be increasingly important to build a sustainable 21^st century economy. This investment will further boost the skills and knowledge pipeline for innovation in industry and employers. I am delighted to see both multinational companies and indigenous industry reflected in this year’s enterprise awards. I want to acknowledge the co-funding that partners are bringing to the awards, indeed the public-private partnership dimension to the programmes brings higher education institutions, industry and employers together and cultivates longer-term collaborations of benefit to all.”