Two Dublin universities have teamed up with a number of multinational companies under a new Science Foundation Ireland Centre for science, engineering and technology research.
The CLARITY centre will concentrate on research into adaptive sensing and information discovery and has secure €16.4 million worth of funding. Science Foundation Ireland will provide €11.8 million of this with the remainder coming from industry.
The director of the new centre is Professor Barry Smyth from University College Dublin and the Deputy Director is DCU's Professor Alan Smeaton. The Tyndall National Institute in Cork is also involved.
In a statement today the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Micheál Martin said the centre's 90 staff would be research integrating sensor data with information processing and artificial intelligence techniques from computer science.
"By linking academic researchers with industry partners in Ireland, SFI CSETs such as CLARITY will play a significant role in building Ireland's new knowledge-driven economy", the Minister said.
The technologies to be researched will help people access information and cope with information overload, he said.