CLOSER COLLABORATION between third-level colleges is essential if Ireland is to build on its position as a global centre for research and learning, Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe said yesterday.
The Minister said successful bids for research funding must demonstrate close co-operation and efficient resource sharing.
He was speaking at a sod-turning ceremony for the new humanities and social sciences building in NUI Maynooth.
The Minister said the €300 million investment under cycle five of research funding for third level was the largest single investment by the State in research.
“We’re confident that the research community will deliver a superb dividend in terms of new ideas, emerging enterprises and sustainable jobs.’’
The new humanities and social sciences building will house three separate research institutes – the National Centre for Geocomputation, the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis and An Foras Feasa, a humanities-based research institute.
NUI Maynooth raised the majority of the funding for the project. The centre will house a lecture theatre for 350 students and office and research space for 200 academics. It will also feature a state of the art imaging laboratory that will give humanities researchers unparalleled facilities for high-resolution, hyperspectral and three-dimensional imaging.
The National Centre for Geocomputation is a world leader in the storage, integration, management, retrieval, display, analysis and modelling of spatial data.
The National Institute for Research and Spatial Analysis undertakes applied and comparative research on spatial processes and their effects on social and economic development in Ireland. The institute has been developed in collaboration with Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, the Institute of Technology, Sligo and Queen’s University, Belfast. By the end of last year, over 240 researchers had been affiliated or funded by the institute, with over 150 projects receiving funding.
The institute is the lead administrative partner in the Irish Social Sciences Platform – an all-island programme of integrated social science research and graduate education focusing on social, cultural and economic transformation in the 21st century.
The institute is funding 54 PhD students over the next four years, along with 16 post-doctoral researchers and a number of support staff.
