Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has announced funding of €24 million for 158 researchers across 11 third-level institutions.
The awards, which will be made over a three-year period, are being granted under the Research Frontiers Programme, which supports high-quality exploratory research in the third-level sector in a number of fields including the biosciences, chemistry, earth sciences, mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering.
"By attracting and unearthing the future stars of the scientific and engineering spheres we are putting in place the foundations for continued economic success," the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin said of the awards.
The SFI said that the awards process was becoming more and more competitive each year while the quality of the submissions has been rising.
Of the initial proposals submitted, 264 researchers were asked to submit full proposals with 259 doing so. The proposals were then subject to international peer review by 12 separate panels made up of 138 experts.
The eleven institutions that were awarded grants were University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, NUI Galway, Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth, Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, Dublin Institute of Technology, University of Limerick, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), and Cork Institute of Technology.
