28/04/2010

€23m Injection Creates High Tech Jobs

Over €25m has been pledged by the Government for the 'smart economy' just as a number of high-tech ventures are announced.

The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, Batt O'Keeffe, said the money which would be made available over the next five years would go to 139 researchers to carry out cutting-edge work that will generate new jobs.

The researchers, who are based in our higher education institutions, were awarded the funding under Science Foundation Ireland's Principal Investigator Programme which supports strategic work in the life science, information communications technology and sustainable energy sectors.

Announcing the money, Minister O'Keefe said: "The wide range of projects on which the selected researchers are working capture the calibre of work under way in our higher education institutions.

"Their focus on turning ideas into commercialised products and services is meeting the challenge of the Innovation Taskforce Report which is rooted in the promise of human capital and our capacity to forge a future for tomorrow's workers."

Meanwhile, sixteen new high-tech and knowledge-intensive business ventures, involving 34 individuals, have joined University College Dublins’s 2010 entrepreneurship programme.

Former participants in the programme now employ over 750 people and companies such as BiancaMed, Celtic Catalysts, Equinome RendezVu and TopChem.

The new ventures and individuals participating on this year’s programme are commercialising research undertaken throughout the University, including research in UCD Schools of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine; Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering; Medicine and Medical Science and in UCD’s National Folklore Collection, Innovation Research Unit and Urban Institute of Ireland.

Dr Pat Frain, Director, NovaUCD said: "These ventures will generate new high-tech jobs to add to the over 750 jobs already created by participants over the years.

"This aspect of is of course critically important for the development of a Smart Economy."

(DW/BMcC)

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