TU Dublin academic secures funding in SFI Frontiers of the Future Initiative
.png)
TU Dublin School of Computer Science receives funding of almost €1.2m for two TU Dublin projects
TU Dublin School of Computer Science greatly welcomes the recent announcement of funding from Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris for two TU Dublin projects that will receive funding of almost €1.2m supporting frontiers research through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
One of these projects will be lead by Dr Dympna O’Sullivan, a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at TU Dublin alongside her Co-Investigator, Dr Julie Doyle, Director of NetwellCASALA at Dundalk Institute of Technology for their project - Enabling Self-Care and Shared Decision Making for People Living with Dementia.
The focus of this project is on developing cutting edge technology to support persons with dementia to live independently in their own homes by self-managing their care.
Speaking about the research, Dr O’Sullivan said “We are delighted to be awarded funding under the SFI Frontiers for the Future programme. Currently there is limited involvement of people with dementia in the design of technology to support their care and we believe strongly that persons with dementia should be at the centre of decision-making about their care. This project aims to develop a computerized solution to support people with dementia to remain healthy and live independently. The solution will be developed in collaboration with persons with dementia and the Alzheimer's Society of Ireland. It will integrate techniques from Human-Computer Interaction to develop an intelligent user interface specifically designed for persons with dementia, from the Internet of Things to create an activity monitoring framework for the home environment and from Machine Learning to implement models for human activity recognition.
The research will have wide societal impact in Ireland where an estimated 55,000 people are currently living with dementia. The impacts will be twofold, an abundance of research shows that persons with dementia are better off at home - by maintaining the ability to be in control of their own care for as long as possible, persons with dementia remain healthier for longer. Homecare allows persons with dementia to prosper while at the same time frees up hospital beds and saves healthcare costs.”
The wider funding scheme will work across 12 Higher Education Institutes and see up to 231 research positions being funded, including 95 Postdoctoral scientists, 101 PhD students and 35 research Assistants. A major function of the scheme was its desire to provide opportunities to address the gender imbalance that currently exists within Irish research. This is a strategy that follows the SFI’s guidelines of providing 45% of new research grants to female researchers. The research projects will also see input from 38 different industrial collaborators and stakeholders.
The SFI Frontiers for the Future programme comprises two funding streams:
- Projects – 45 high-risk, high-reward research projects will receive €25 million to facilitate highly innovative and novel approaches to research.
- Awards - 26 larger scale innovative, collaborative excellent research programmes that have the potential to deliver economic and societal impact will receive €28m in funding.
More information about the SFI Frontiers of the Future programme can be found here.
TU Dublin Computer Science November 2020