TU Dublin’s GroSafe Project Secures €500,000 Additional Funding from Research Ireland’s National Challenge Fund
TU Dublin, in partnership with the ISPCC has been awarded an additional €500,000 through Research Ireland’s National Challenge Fund to advance their innovative project, ‘GroSafe’. This initiative, part of the ‘OurTech Challenge,’ seeks to enhance the connections between government, communities, and individuals by addressing the critical issue of child grooming through a cutting-edge technological solution. Each of the teams selected will have the opportunity for additional funding in the final phase of the programme, where prize funding of between €1-2million will be on offer to the most competitive teams under each Challenge.
Celine Fitzgerald, Interim CEO, Research Ireland, said;
The National Challenge Fund is a solution-focused approach that encourages teams to work across discipline and sectoral boundaries, enabling collaboration between academic researchers, industry and government stakeholders and end-users, and ensuring they are developing innovative and implementable solutions. I wish all the finalist teams success as they continue to develop their unique research projects
The GroSafe project, led by Dr Christina Thorpe Head of Cybersecurity in the School of Informatics and Cybersecurity and Dr Matt Bowden, Academic Lead, Culture & Society Research Hub and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Law and Education, aims to build societal resilience against grooming through a ‘Technology-Enabled Solution.’ This unique initiative integrates expertise in technology, child protection, and social impact to address a pressing societal challenge.
The additional funding marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of the GroSafe project. During the Seed phase, the team successfully developed a proof-of-concept that demonstrated the potential of their gamified training and user-friendly reporting applications. With this new funding, the Grow phase will focus on enhancing the solution with a Knowledge Management System, and AI-driven features.
Dr Christina Thorpe shared her thoughts on this milestone;
The additional funding and extended timeline are truly transformative for the GroSafe project. This support enables us to significantly expand our platform, deepen stakeholder engagement, and ensure our solution creates a meaningful and lasting societal impact.
The project’s success has been bolstered by strong partnerships. In addition to the ISPCC, Dr Susan McKeever; TU Dublin and Dr Brian Barry; Trinity College Dublin will collaborate with the ConsentEd project, law enforcement agencies, frontline stakeholders, and a growing network of schools and community organizations.
Dr Matt Bowden emphasised the importance of these collaborations;
Our partner, the ISPCC, has been critical to the societal impact of this project. Key to this has been their unwavering passion and commitment to improving the lives of children, alongside their strong engagement with issues of online safety. Their work with us has been invaluable and has contributed immensely to the success of our research so far.
This project has been supported by funding from the EU Commission Recovery and Resilience Facility under the Research Ireland OurTech Challenge (Grant Reference Number: 22/NCF/OT/11158G). The National Challenge Fund, established under the Irish government’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and funded by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, is coordinated and administered by Research Ireland.
National Challenge Fund Full Press Release:
Over €9 million announced for National Challenge Fund finalists