€1.2m for ITT research projects

THE Institute of Technology in Tralee has secured over €1.2 million in funding to jointly run two major research projects.

This brings to over €11million the total value of research grants secured by IT Tralee from competitive national and EU funding bodies in the past 12 months.

IT Tralee will receive €940,000 under the EU Agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) – which is co-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine and the EU – to lead the Biorefinery Glas project, Ireland’s first small-scale bioeconomy initiative.

IT Tralee will partner with University College Dublin, the Carbery Group, Barryroe Co-Operative and Wageningen University-spinout GRASSA BV on the project, through which farmers will demonstrate new business models using an automated and low-cost biorefinery model.

The two-year demonstration project will commence in 2019.

Additional research funding of €268,000 was awarded to IT Tralee under the EU Interreg Atlantic Area Programme. This initiative will see IT Tralee work with research partners in the UK, Spain, Portugal and France to develop joint solutions to shared transnational challenges that impede sustainable ‘blue’ growth in the marine and maritime sectors along respective EU Atlantic coastlines.

The project is set to start in 2019 and will run for three years.

Enda Buckley (Sustainability Director, Carbery Group); James Gaffey (Principal Investigator, IT Tralee); Karina Pierce (Associate Professor, UCD): and Johan Sanders, GRASSA founder.