26 Projects Announced under the COVID-19 Rapid Response Research and Innovation Programme

The Government today announced details of the first 26 projects that will receive €5 million funding under the newly established national coordinated research and innovation response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peter Brown, Director of the Irish Research Council, welcomed the announcement, saying: “The COVID-19 pandemic has had, and will continue to have, a profound effect on nearly every aspect of our lives. The road to social and economic recovery will be multi-dimensional and will benefit from the expertise and evidence of Ireland’s research community across all disciplines. The projects announced here today seek to inform the next steps we take as a nation, both in the short term and as we look further ahead. The experts driving these projects are a subset of the broader Irish research and innovation ecosystem, which has much to contribute to successfully addressing the many challenges presented by the pandemic.”

Dr Darrin Morrissey, Chief Executive at the Health Research Board, adds: “COVID-19 will test people’s health and our health and economic resilience like nothing in recent history. Research and evidence are critical to understanding how COVID-19 works and key to getting Ireland back open again. I want to congratulate the Irish research community who have come up with an incredible range of research projects to help tackle the health, social and economic challenges that COVID-19 presents. 

“The projects address short, medium and long-term aspects of this crisis, to help treat COVID-19, support front line staff and understand the disease better. The evidence that they generate will be key to supporting staff and changing practice so we can continue to deliver all health care while we live alongside COVID-19.”

The Irish Research Council and the Health Research Board joined together to fund the first strand of the call, focusing on the development of medical countermeasures, health service readiness, and social and political countermeasures to COVID-19. Following international peer review, 21 projects were selected with a total investment of €3.4 million. For further information on a selection of the projects, click on the IRC-HRB Case Studies or watch the project videos. The full list of funded projects can be found in the table below.

IRC-HRB Case Studies

Case Study videos:

• Professor Rose Anne Kenny, TCD
• Professor Alice Coffey, UL
• Dr Gerard Molloy, NUI Galway
• Professor Catherine Comiskey, TCD
• Dr John Lambert, UCD

Speaking at today’s announcement, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, said: “Research, development and innovation will play a significant role in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.  The projects announced today are part of a national drive to find solutions to the challenges we face. Right across the country, our research community in our Higher Education Institutions and businesses, both indigenous and foreign owned, have mobilised to address these key issues. The projects announced today, which take in health and social care as well as policy and industry, will help to address how we can ease the restrictions over time and get the country back up-and-running again.” 

Minister for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan said “I want to acknowledge the ongoing support from the higher education institutions and researchers across the country that have undertaken a vast array of actions to support and deal with the challenges we face. Research, development and innovation will have a significant role to play in our response to Covid-19. Governments around the globe have also rapidly mobilised research in tackling the crisis, and the opportunities being provided to our research community will ensure a coordinated and meaningful contribution to solving some of the challenges we are presented with during the current crisis. It is through sustainable investment in research that we will beat Covid-19 and future pandemics, as well as generate the insight and understanding to support responsive social, economic and cultural policies.

SFI, EI and the IDA funded the second strand of the call, an agile and adaptive initiative to support development of innovative solutions, including STEM-based social/behavioural science, that can have rapid demonstrable impact on the current COVID-19 crisis in Ireland. Five projects were funded to develop solutions for the shortfall in reagents for testing. More information on all five projects can be found in the Case Studies link.

SFI, EI & IDA Case Studies