- The US-Ireland Research and Development (R&D) Partnership
- The Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)-DFE Investigators Programme Partnership (2014 and 2015 Calls)
- The SFI Covid-19 Rapid Response Rapid Response Call – Phase 2
US - Ireland R&D Partnership
The US-Ireland R&D Partnership has its origins in the US-Ireland Business Summit that took place in Washington, DC in 2002.
The US-Ireland R&D Partnership is a tri-jurisdictional alliance which was officially launched in 2006. Its aim is to promote collaborative innovative research projects which create value above and beyond individual efforts.
Through the Partnership, the Governments of the United States of America, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland support collaborative research with the potential to generate valuable discoveries and innovations which are transferable to the marketplace or will lead to enhancements in health promotions, disease prevention and healthcare.
The “US-Ireland R&D Partnership” helps link scientists and engineers in partnerships across academia to address crucial research questions and to expand educational and research career opportunities in science & engineering.
The Government Departments and Agencies across the three jurisdictions supporting this initiative are:
- Northern Ireland – Department for the Economy (DfE) and the Health and Social Care (HSC) R&D Division of the Public Health Agency and Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA);
- Republic of Ireland – Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Health Research Board and Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine;
- United States of America – National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
Thematic areas
The following thematic areas have been prioritised as important research challenges for the health and prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Ireland and Northern Ireland:
- Sensors and Sensor Networks
- Nanoscale Science and Engineering
- Telecommunications
- Energy and Sustainability
- Cybersecurity
- Health
- Agriculture
How the Partnership operates
The Partnership is guided by a joint Steering Group composed of senior representatives from government and academia across the three jurisdictions. Secretariat for the Partnership is provided by InterTradeIreland.
Under the US-Ireland R&D process, the Partnership facilitates university researchers to submit joint research proposals in the identified priority areas. As part of this funding process, the governments (and/or relevant government research agencies within the Partnership) contribute to the costs of researchers based in their jurisdictions. All proposals submitted under the auspices of the Partnership must have significant research involvement from researchers in all three jurisdictions. Excellent science is considered fundamental and this is ensured by utilising the competitive peer review systems of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which are gold standards for quality in scientific peer review.
In Northern Ireland:
- the Department for the Economy (DfE) supports projects in the eligible areas of Sensors and Sensor Networks, Nanoscale Science and Engineering, Telecommunications and Energy/Sustainability which fall under the jurisdiction of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US;
- the Health and Social care (HSC) R&D Division of the Public Health Agency supports health-related projects which fall under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US;
- the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs supports agriculture related projects which fall under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in the US.
For further details of pre-approval and submission procedures, please see the guidelines on the website of the relevant funding agency.
Successful US-Ireland projects (led by Principal Investigator)
A list of approved projects for 2018 and 2019 is provided below:
2019 Principal Investigator Led Projects
Ref No |
NI PI |
NI HEI |
Title |
Value £ (project duration) |
USI 140 |
Doctor Miryam Arredondo Arechavala |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Engineering deterministic electron correlations and topological states in site-controlled III-V quantum droplets (EDTOQ) |
£ 298,866 (over 3 years) |
USI 150 |
Dr Hamza Shakeel |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Enabling next generation integrated optoelectronics with free-form metamaterials based on graphene
|
£ 299,991 (over 3 years) |
2018 Principal Investigator Led Projects
Ref No |
NI PI |
NI HEI |
Title |
Value £ (project duration) |
---|---|---|---|---|
USI 127 |
Professor Jorge Kohanoff |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Thermoelectric Concrete Envelope (ThermoConc) |
£ 299,716 (over 3 years) |
USI 134 |
Doctor Michail Matthaiou |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Transcoding: A New Approach for Multi-Hop Communications |
£ 299,429 (over 3 years) |
USI 132 |
Professor Andrew Mills |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Emerging Materials for Energy storage and environmental Research enabled through Atomic Layer Deposition, (EMERALD) |
£ 271,833 (over 3 years) |
USI 130 |
Professor Helen McCarthy |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Non‐Viral Delivery of Genetic Cargo on Biomaterial Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration |
£ 295,655 (over 3 years) |
USI 137 |
Doctor Ulrich Ofterdinger |
Queen’s University Belfast |
Urban ARK: Assessment, Risk management and Knowledge for coastal flood management in urban areas |
£ 297,474 (over 4 years) |
US Ireland R&D Partnership - Centre to Centre Agreement
Under the associated US-Ireland R&D Partnership Centre to Centre agreement, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its partner organisations Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland (DfE NI) have developed a mechanism to link SFI-funded Research Centres, NSF-funded Engineering Research Centres (ERCs) and researchers in academic research centres in Northern Ireland.
This opportunity, building upon previous individual investigator driven collaborations between US researchers and colleagues in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, seeks to build Centre-based research collaborations.
As Northern Ireland does not have large scale Research Centres like the NSF and SFI Research Centres, the Department will assess Northern Ireland (NI) applications on a case by case basis. Depending on the volume of applications received, the Department may have to prioritise which applications can be supported based on the greatest potential benefits to the NI economy.and may restrict the number of awards to one Center to Centre award at a time.
How to apply
Downloadable forms and FAQs are available at:
Successful Centre to Centre US-Ireland projects
A list of approved Centre-to-Centre projects for 2018 and 2019 is provided below:
2019 Centre to Centre Projects
Ref No |
NI PI |
NI HEI |
Title |
Value (project duration) £ |
---|---|---|---|---|
USI 146 |
Professor Davide Mariotti |
University of Ulster |
International Collaboration on Advanced Photovoltaics: Manufacturing and Indoor Power Applications |
£ 299,350 (2 years) |
2018 Centre to Centre Projects
Ref No |
NI PI |
NI HEI |
Title |
Value (project duration) £ |
---|---|---|---|---|
USI 139 |
Dr Darragh McArt/ Prof Mark Lawler |
Queen’s University |
ECHO-SENS: Externally Charged CardiOvascular bioSENSors |
£ 299,902 (4 years) |
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) - Department for the Economy (DfE) Investigators Programme Partnership pilot
In 2014 the Department and SFI announced a ground-breaking collaboration which allowed NI universities to participate as full academic partners in SFI’s prestigious "Investigators Programme". The Collaboration Agreement covered the 2014 and 2015 calls only.
The "SFI/DfE`s Investigators Programme Partnership" is supporting collaborative projects involving universities from both jurisdictions to undertake internationally peer reviewed, leading edge, discovery and fundamental research.
Approved projects under the 2014 Call started in August 2015, approved projects under the 2015 Call started in August 2016 and February 2017. The projects are due to finish from late 2020-2022.
SFI/DfE projects funded 2014 and 2015
A list of approved projects funded in the 2014 and 2015 call is provided below:
SFI/DfE Investigators Programme 2015 Call Projects
Ref No. |
NI Principal Investigator (s) |
NI HEI |
Award Title |
NI funding (£) |
---|---|---|---|---|
15/1A/2881
|
Mark Emmerson, Jack Lennon |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Biodiversity, resilience and food security: understanding the role of biodiversity in maintaining food production |
714,261
|
15/1A/3152
|
Amy Jane McKnight, Peter Maxwell |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Discovery of an integrated risk profile for chronic kidney disease and development of a clinical biomarker panel for personalising medicine |
948,969
|
15/1A/3028
|
Paulo Prodohl |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Wild farmed interactions in a changing world: formulation of a predictive methodology to inform environmental best practice to secure long-term sustainability of global wild and farm fish populations |
821,169
|
15/1A/3160
|
Ivana Savic, Jorge Kohanoff |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Thermoelectric efficiency of IV-VI and V2 –V13 materials driven near phase transitions |
644,535
|
15/1A/3136
|
Alan Stitt |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Combinatoral Cell Therapy for Diabetes-related critical limb ischaemia |
451,077
|
15/1A/2864
|
Mauro Paternostro |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Quantum Control of Nanostructures for Quantum Networking (QuNaNet)’ |
836,198
|
15/1A/3058
|
Neill Hewitt
|
University of Ulster |
Energy storage and demand-side flexibility within future electricity markets |
633,044 |
SFI/DfE Investigators Programme 2014 Call Projects
Ref No. |
NI Principal Investigator (s) |
NI HEI |
Award Title |
NI funding (£) |
---|---|---|---|---|
14/1A/2549
|
Dr Keith Farnsworth |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Creating the knowledge for precision fisheries management: spatially aware ‘nudging’ to achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield using real time fisheries incentives |
415,055 |
14/1A/2646
|
Professor Chris Elliott |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Metabolomic and array based biomarker approaches to understand human exposure to potent carcinogenic fresh water toxins |
463,190
|
14/1A/2474
|
Professor Dimitrios Nikolopoulos |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Meeting the future challenges of heterogeneous and extreme scale parallel computing |
521,947 |
14/1A/2582
|
Dr Daniel Longley |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Development of personalised medicine approaches for the clinical application of IAP antagonists in metastatic and high risk early stage colorectal cancer |
637,289
|
14/1A/2559
|
Professor Gavin Andrews Professor David Jones |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Development of Fixed dose combination products using Advanced Pharmaceutical Processing Technologies |
535,682 |
14/1A/2304
|
Professor John Dalton, Professor Aaron Maule |
Queen’s University, Belfast |
Application of New and Emerging Technologies to Develop Vaccines against Fasciola hepatica
|
545,291
|
14/1A/2371
|
Dr John McGrath |
Queen’s University |
i-PAD: Innovative biological phosphate (bioP) and anaerobic digestion (AD) technology for waste treatment, energy, and phosphorus recovery |
380,168
|
SFI Covid-19 Rapid Response Call – Phase 2
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, DfE provided funding to allow Northern Ireland (NI) universities to collaborate with colleagues in the Republic of Ireland where they make a successful joint bid to the SFI Rapid Response Funding Call - Phase 2.
Launched on 30 June 2020, the SFI call represents an important opportunity for local researchers to make a significant and immediate contribution to tackling the hugely demanding and unique range of medical-related, societal and economic challenges posed by this latest strain of Coronavirus.
A total of 7 projects involving NI partners were successful at the international peer review stage. These will be funded for approximately 5 months until end of March 2021. These are listed below:
Ref No. |
NI PI |
NI HEI |
Award Title |
NI Funding (£) |
---|---|---|---|---|
QUB 03 (20/COV/8362) |
Dr Connor Bamford |
Queen’s University |
DELAY-COVID: Dysregulated innatE immunity in Liver disease Amplifies the severitY of COVID-19 |
£25,000 |
QUB 05 (20/COV/8511) |
Professor Alan Stitt |
Queen’s University |
New Approaches to Understanding Blood Vessel Dysfunction in COVID-19 Patients |
£49,497 |
QUB 08 (20/COV/8566) |
Professor Cecilia O’Kane |
Queen’s University |
Markers of adipose tissue and systemic inflammation in obese and non-obese patients with COVID-19 |
£77,716 |
QUB 09 (20/COV/8549) |
Professor Danny McAuley |
Queen’s University |
Biological profiling in COVID-19 infection to characterise optimal therapeutic approaches |
£77,716 |
QUB 10 (20/COV/8556) |
Professor Brendan Gilmore |
Queen’s University |
COVID-19 and the environment: Plasma-enabled fogging for safe and effective surface decontamination |
£39,583 |
UU 01 (20/COV/8555) |
Dr Victoria McGilligan |
University of Ulster |
InflaTMP: Design of a novel combination anti-inflammatory and anti-viral biotherapeutic for COVID-19 targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome and TMPRSS2 |
£366,915 |
UU 07 (20/COV/8581) |
Professor Tony Bjourson |
University of Ulster |
COVREs: Understanding the Host-Virus Response in Patients with Mild versus Serious Disease |
£354,637 |
Further information
In the first instance, prospective NI applicants should contact the respective Research Office at Queen’s University or Ulster University.
Department for the Economy
Higher Education Research and Knowledge Exchange branch
Email: usireland@economy-ni.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)28 90257637