University College Cork is to build a £9 million centre of excellence for environmental research at Ringaskiddy. It will bring together academic and student researchers working in a range of faculties from engineering and the sciences to law and sustainable energy.
"Environmental research is done in about 19 different departments, either through teaching or research, and nine different research centres are dedicated to environmental research," explained the college's vice-president for research, policy and support, Prof Brian Harvey, who is also the director of the Wellcome Trust Research Unit at UCC. "We are grouping these into an integrated environmental research institute."
The funding has been allocated through the Government's Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, administered by the Higher Education Authority. Most of the £13.3 million award will go towards the building, which will be next to the National Maritime College to give it a marine setting, Prof Harvey said. The remainder will pay for PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
"This is a very long-term commitment to research," he explained. It ties in a wide range of third-level collaborators who will add depth and breadth to the research effort. These include fellow Atlantic University Alliance members, NUI Galway and the University of Limerick, as well as Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, IT Carlow, University College Dublin, Dublin IT, IT Tralee and Cork IT.
All UCC's environmental work will be brought together in a single location, he said. This includes marine, coastal and atmospheric chemistry research, hydraulics engineering, environmental management, sustainable energy, law, environmental biotechnology, ecotoxicology and biodiversity.
It will start with an initial 150 researchers, which will rise to 210 by the time Phase I of the project is completed by 2003, Prof Harvey said. The building will have extensive laboratory facilities, large wave tanks for hydraulic studies, equipment for advanced atmospheric chemical analysis and GIS systems to support computer modelling of the environment.
"The building itself will actually be a research tool," he added, explaining that it would support studies on how the built environment affects the wider environment.
Phase II is also under way and will parallel Phase I development, he said. EU and private-sector funding so far worth £3 million will be used to create a marine and coastal research centre within the institute. This will involve moving the three groups working in the existing Coastal Zone Institute to the new centre, and co-ordinating their research activities.
Phase III is the "ecosite phase", Prof Harvey explained. The institute will actually be located on an "ecosite", a defined area where environmental research measurements relating to climate change, pollution and other parameters will be recorded.
There is a European network of ecosites, and UCC is the Irish node, Prof Harvey said. Each of the collaborating members of the new institute will serve as an ecosite, and data collected from these will feed into the wider European picture. All members can share ecosite data available at other network locations across Europe, information which provides highly localised and regional information about the state of the environment.
The ecosite phase will be conducted in collaboration with the local pharmachem industries in the Ringaskiddy area, Prof Harvey explained. The ecosite would provide real-life opportunities to study environmental problems such as pollution, coastal erosion and toxins in aquaculture.
All the institute's members will be linked via satellite so that data exchange can be automated. "We will be using these data to develop environmental models. We will be using the ecosites as a test bed," Prof Harvey said.
Prof Brian Harvey, director of UCC's Wellcome Trust Research Unit: the centre is a long-term commitment to research