ESRI awards funding to Advanced GeoTechnologies at Maynooth

2007-11-14

Pictured at the presentation of the SFI awards were, from l-r:
Prof. Frank Gannon, Director General SFI; Mr. Micheál Martin, TD Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment; Prof. Stewart Fotheringham, NUI Maynooth and Prof. Pat Fottrell, Chairperson SFI

On Wednesday 14th November, Micheál Martin T.D, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, announced Science Foundation Ireland’s research investment awards totalling €87 million across a number of groundbreaking industry-academic projects. This is the largest funding award made by Science Foundation Ireland under its Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) and the new Strategic Research Clusters (SRC) programmes.  The funding follows a rigorous review and assessment process and all award recipients were assessed by a total of 50 internationally renowned scientific experts, who came to Ireland and participated in the site review process.

This announcement has special significance for the National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG), Maynooth, which was one of the recipients receiving over €7m towards future research initiatives.  ESRI has a dedicated interest in the R&D work undertaken here and has committed to €500,000 in funding over the next five years towards “Advanced Geotechnologies” research & development.

Advanced geotechnologies are used to record the location of people, animals and objects more accurately and to process this information in a multitude of application areas important to Ireland and the rest of the world such as navigation, monitoring air and water pollution and disaster management operations. Professor Stewart Fotheringham is spearheading this research and commented “The NCG is proud to work with ESRI-Ireland and its other industry and agency partners on this exciting research area”.

Michael Byrne at ESRI Ireland, concluded “Geography is more than just a place on a map with distinctive topographic features. It fundamentally influences and connects our many cultures, societies, and ways of life. Our long term collaboration with NCG Maynooth will have far reaching outcomes in the coming years, bringing together academic and industrial partners to provide the mechanisms for new innovative research, talent growth, entrepreneurial leadership and real opportunities for geographic information systems to become an indispensable part of our customers decision making processes”.