NUI Galway’s groundbreaking CÚRAM Medical Devices Research Centre has been awarded €46.37 million in funding to keep its cutting edge research going for the next six years.
The funding of €46,372,380 from Science Foundation Ireland was announced this week to support the continued development of the medtech sector in the West of Ireland.
Galway possesses and extremely strong medtech sector, with multinationals such as Boston Scientific and Medtronic keeping a heavy presence here; but also due to the large number of startup companies based around new medical devices.
Part of the success of this success is due to strong partnerships between industry and academia, both SMEs and multinationals, facilitated by world class research and testing, such as is carried at CÚRAM.
The funding announced this week by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris will support up to 520 researchers at CÚRAM over the next six years.
The three pillars of CÚRAM’s research and development of medical devices are cardiovascular disease, neural, and soft tissue pathologies, with the goal of finding new ways to manage chronic conditions.
Professor Abhay Pandit, Scientific Director of CÚRAM, said that the centre has come a long way since its founding six years ago, having “matured significantly” in that time.
“The foundation which has been laid down over that period now positions CÚRAM well for making a continued global impact and developing novel and innovative medical devices to meet clinical needs.
“The transition from a Centre having a highly diverse set of projects, to a focused Centre with a balanced portfolio of prototype devices will be exciting, challenging and rewarding to our ecosystem.”
Based at NUI Galway, CÚRAM is becoming recognised globally as a ‘go-to’ Centre for undertaking medical devices research since being founded in 2015.
CÚRAM currently employs 190 researchers in 10 partner institutes, and to date has 38 industry partners that include 15 multinational corporation partners and 23 SMEs.
The 150 projects completed there since 2015 have resulted in 3 patent applications; 1,712 journal publications; 10 licence agreements; and five spin-outs.
CÚRAM was one of five SFI research centres in Ireland awarded a total investment of €193 million over the next six years.
Minister Simon Harris said that this investment reflects Ireland’s position as a “world leader in research and innovation”, and will help position Ireland to deal with disruption from “global societal and economic challenges”.
“The five centres will also work to promote science, technology, engineering and maths to the wider public through extensive Education and Public Engagement outreach.”
“These initiatives include summer computer camps, developing secondary school education modules, and residency programmes for filmmakers, artists and teachers to forge collaborations between researchers and the community.”
