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Minister English Announces Euros1.7 Million Funding to Support Women Returning to Science, Technology,Engineering or Mathematics Careers
[November 04, 2014]

Minister English Announces Euros1.7 Million Funding to Support Women Returning to Science, Technology,Engineering or Mathematics Careers


(Targeted News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ATHLONE, Ireland, Nov. 4 -- The Science Foundation Ireland issued the following news release: Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation, Damien English TD, today announced the ten recipients of Euros1.7 million in funding delivered by the Department of Jobs through the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Advance Award Programme. The programme is aimed at encouraging women to return to or stay in a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and the recipients were recognised at the SFI Science Summit, which has been taking place in Athlone for the past two days, with 300 leading researchers in Ireland in attendance.



Commenting at the SFI Science Summit, Minister English, said: "The SFI Advance Award Programme is aimed at boosting diversity and gender-balance within the Irish private and public research system by enabling more women with science degrees who have taken a career break to return to the sector. We are delighted to have created opportunities for these ten high calibre individuals in order for them to pursue their passion in STEM. The quality and scope of the research involved highlights the commercial and societal benefits that SFI is delivering through its funded programmes." Professor Mark Ferguson, Director General of SFI and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, added: "SFI is dedicated to supporting excellent scientific research that delivers a commercial impact and brings about positive benefits for Irish society. In order to achieve this we have to create a working environment that enables anyone that wishes to follow a career in science, technology, engineering or maths to achieve their full potential." The Advance Award programme recipients included: * Dr Catherine Mooney, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland - Seizures are the most common neurological emergency in newborns and require urgent treatment, but are hard to predict and detect in newborns without the use of continuous brain monitoring, which is currently only available in specialist centres. This project aims to create an easier way to predict and detect seizures in babies.

* Dr Caitriona Long-Smith, UCC - The hippocampus is a brain region responsible for mood and memory. This project will investigate how supplementation with a seaweed-derived nutraceutical may protect the brain against stress- and inflammatory-induced memory decline.


* Dr Aleksandra Kaszubowska-Anandaraja, Trinity College Dublin - The unprecedented growth in Internet traffic together with advent of cloud storage and computing, place great pressure on network providers. This research project is aimed at developing a new approach to networking, termed Software Defined Optical Networks. This would allow the telecommunication systems to become more responsive to customers' demand.

* Dr Lorraine Bateman, UCC - This project is focused on the single most powerful technique for examining the properties of organic compounds used as pharmaceuticals - NMR spectroscopy. The goals of this project are to use this approach to study complex dynamic systems where two forms of a compound are interconverting rapidly and therefore cannot be separated, and to develop new approaches which improve the safety of pharmaceuticals through use of NMR analysis.

* Dr Elisabetta Arca, Trinity College Dublin - Dr Arca's research aims to improve the performance and reliability of p-n junctions, the fundamental building blocks of many electronic devices, including computers, flat screens and LEDs. This project aims to bring the technological development of transparent p-n junctions to a completely new level, thus enabling a set of new functionalities necessary for the realization of transparent electronics.

* Dr Hye-Young Kim, Trinity College Dublin - The objective of this research project is to investigate the electronic properties of new scalable two-dimensional materials - transition metal dichalcogenides. Recently, it has been revealed that these materials are promising candidates for future use in chips for Information Technology. This project will reveal insights into the future device applications of this new class of materials, which will be of high interest to the semiconductor industry.

* Dr Vesna Jaksic, UCC - Composite materials are lightweight, durable, don't corrode in seawater and can replace steel structures for offshore renewable energy applications such as wind and tidal turbines. This project will carry out composite design and characterisation for a tower for an offshore wind turbine; and a support structure for a tidal turbine.

* Dr Damaris Fernandez, Trinity College Dublin - This project aims to design novel processing techniques to recover valuable elements from mineral aggregates of highly-complex solid composition and large surface-to-volume ratios.

* Dr Huihui Lu, Tyndall Institute - This project aims to develop technologies to integrate miniaturised light delivery systems on silicon biosensors to enable future portable and wearable diagnostic devices.

* Dr Agnieszka Indiana Olbert, NUIG - Irish waters have one of the richest and most accessible marine renewable energy resources in the world. In this project surface currents and gravity waves and interactions between them will be investigated using the state-of-the-art numerical ocean-wave modelling system in conjunction with field measurements obtained from the most advanced and unique CODAR radar technology and wave buoys. Integration of model results and CODAR data will provide high resolution, accurate maps of wave and tidal stream energy resources off the west coast of Ireland, including the site of the first Irish wave energy farm, ESB's WestWave project.

The primary purpose of SFI's Advance Award Programme is to provide female postdoctoral researchers with an opportunity to remain in, or return to, high-quality scientific research and in particular, to undertake further training that has substantial industry relevance. It is SFI's expectation that researchers participating in the Advance Programme will be in a position to secure STEM employment in industry or in the public sector.

TNS 24KuanRap-101104 30FurigayJof-4923977 30FurigayJof (c) 2014 Targeted News Service

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