From cyber resilience to renewable energy storage, innovative teams recently exhibited their projects at the National Challenge Fund Showcase.
Since 2022, Research Ireland has coordinated and administered the National Challenge Fund (NCF), an investigation fund of 65 million euros that supports academic researchers to work with the government, the company, public sector organizations and social stakeholders.
The NCF, which was established under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Irish government and funded by the EU recovery and resilience installation, seeks to address the challenges in the areas of green transition and digital transformation and three digital).
With each challenge, which includes four participants in the concept of phases, seeds, growing and-NCF awards develop their solutions, progress through the phases and work towards the General Awards Award or 1-2 million euros.
On April 30, Research Ireland held an NCF exhibition event in Croke Park in Dublin, highlighting 34 projects that had successful progress to the program growth phase, receiving € 500,000 in funds for 12 months as a result.
With the hope of learning more about the NCF and some of the innovative solutions that are being developed, Siliconrepublic.com went to the shop window and spoke with some project leaders.
“The challenge fund combines funds with training, with the ability to bring a much broader team, perhaps, than other research financing currents,” said Dr. Ruth Freeman of Ireland Research to Siliconrepublic.com. “For me, that’s why it is important and that is why it is different and that is why it has the potential to have a real impact here on Ireland.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxmepbuh3gy
Cybernetic Resilience
A protagonist of the project we talked to was Dr. Hazel Murray, who told us about his project entitled ‘Cybernetic Resilience – Digital Resilience for SMEs’, which considers supporting small businesses when it comes to cyber crimes.
“We are increasingly seeing small businesses that are directed as a child of low fruit, and they do not have the experience and do not have the support to give Anya or where to start when they look at cyber security,” Murray explained.
“So we ask them to qualify the tremors between one and five how insurance are, and then at the end of the interview we would also have our own qualification of them.”
According to Murray, the team’s risk assessment tool works “business centered questions” in relation to the presence of a website, the employee count, if the company allows remote work and what type of data are being stored.
“In the end we give them three tips for what they should do immediately to combat their cyber security, and we also give them a risk score compared to other people in their sector so that they have an idea of where they feel, and we hope that they can return a few months later and see that score by increasing,” Murray said.
Renewable storage
Another project that we observed in Croke Park was the renewable energy storage reactor, or RERR, which aims to provide a more beneficial way to harvest and store hydrogen gas as a renewable energy source.
“Our Rerr technology is a reactor that incorporates a solid state material with a catalyst to generate hydrogen safely at the request of any application in which hydrogen is required,” explained the project co-leader, Dr. James Carton.
Carton says that this technology has potential applications in the support power, as well as sectors such as automotive, aerospace and aviation industries.
“We believe we will be a piece of the puzzle to decarbonize some of these sectors,” he said.
Dr. Andrew Phillips of the project explained that the method of the harvesting equipment cleaning the hydrogen is based on a material called Amonia Borane, a stable material that when combined with a special molecule as a catalyst, releases hydrogen.
“Then, when doing that, we can create hydrogen on request,” Phillips explained. “So we don’t need to store it in very large tanks.
“We can say:” It is fine, we could release this amount of hydrogen “, and in general, what is done is that it passes to a protons exchange membrane, which became electrical energy and releases only water.”
Real impact
In the showcase, the project teams also talked about their bar experience in the NCF.
For Murray, participating in the NCF has been greatly shocking.
“This was one of the first great financing I obtained, and I would say that the trajectory of my research and my career has changed,” he said.
Phillips echoed this positive feeling, highlighting how the NCF has encouraged the development of these solutions.
“This Research Ireland initiative basically said:” Here there is some money, it elaborates it and shows that it works, “he said.” Therefore, it is great to have enough to gather a team and also have, courses and things so that we understand thought, as how can we think together, how we present and solve problems? “
Do not miss the knowledge you need to succeed. Register for him Daily letterSilicon Digest Republic of Science Fiction Technology News.
