A delegation of U.S. officials, led by Deputy Under Secretary Dr. Ann Bartuska, (pictured left) USDA’s Research, Education and Economics mission area, and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Space and Health, Dr. Jonathan Margolis, U.S. State Department, attended the meeting to formalize the expansion. The agriculture component of the Partnership, in its pilot phase, will focus on plant-associated microorganisms and plant-microbe interactions; plant-associated insects and nematodes; animal health & disease; and animal nutrition, growth, and lactation.
In welcoming the extension, Mr. Feargal O Móráin, the Ireland Co-Chair of the Steering Group and meeting host remarked “ the four areas identified for collaboration have strategic relevance to all three jurisdictions and given the world-class research strengths we share in these fields, we can look forward to collaborative, innovative approaches to the key challenges in these areas”
The partnership also announced the successful launch of the first two collaborations between research centres. The first project, Partnership in Continuous Manufacturing for Nano-based Drug Products includes collaborators at Synthesis & Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre at the University of Limerick, the Centre of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Centre for Structured Organic Particulate Systems at Rutgers University and Purdue University. The second, Agile Cloud Service Delivery using Integrated Photonics Networking features the Irish Photonic Integration Centre & Centre for Future Networks and Communications at Dublin City University, the Computer Science Research Institute at Ulster University, and the Centre for Integrated Access Networks at the University of Arizona.
Northern Ireland Steering Group Co-Chair, Dr. Rosemary Hamilton CBE commented “The value of these centre-to-centre collaborations lies in the complementary and synergistic activities amongst each of the partners and represent a significant step-up in the scale of activity for the Partnership”
These projects bring the portfolio of US-Ireland R&D Partnership projects to 27 which have a combined investment value of £32m (or €43m or $49m).
Pictured at the launch of the founding Centre-to-Centre research projects are, l-r, Prof Liam Barry, Irish Photonic Integration Centre & Centre for Future Networks and Communications at Dublin City University; Prof Gavin Andrews, Centre of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast; Prof Philip Morrow, Computer Science Research Institute at Ulster University; and Prof Kieran Hodnett, Synthesis & Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre. at the University of Limerick
