AIT Researchers Awarded €2 Million for specialist equipment

Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) researchers have received €2 million from Enterprise Ireland’s Capital Fund for highly specialist equipment this past year.

Building on the phenomenal success of last year’s application, researchers recently secured an additional €830,000 for cutting-edge research and development equipment for the institute’s two Enterprise Ireland technology gateways – APT and COMAND.

APT, which provides polymer technology solutions for companies in the medical, composite, recycling, and pharmaceutical sectors and is housed within AIT’s Materials Research Institute, was awarded the bulk of the funding, €600,000.

The equipment, which has applications in the pharmaceutical and packaging industries, consists of a planetary roller extruder, a 3D solid imaging system, and a scanning thermal microscope with nano thermal analysis capabilities.

AIT researchers will put funding to good use

The funding will further enable the Athlone Institute of Technology to address the needs of Ireland’s €2 billion plastics industry through world-class consultancy, upskilling, and new research and development techniques.

“This funding will help us to support companies interested in trying out cutting-edge technologies and novel polymer techniques – all of which advances our industrial partners’ own innovation agendas,” Dr Noel Gately, APT gateway manager, explained.

“On top of that, these state-of-the-art technologies will also be used to upskill companies – whether that be through short term training courses, master’s degrees or PhDs – where they feel there is a need or a gap in their knowledge.”

Dr Ian Major, a principal investigator within the Materials Research Institute, said: “Planetary extrusion compounding is a new addition to our services and will enable us to produce new compounds from heat-sensitive polymers – such as bio-sourced bioplastics”.

He continued by speaking about the many uses these compounds have.

“These new compounds can then be used in the production of biodegradable packaging and other green products. The technology can be also be utilised in other sectors, including medical and pharma, where heat-sensitive polymers are important materials.”

Gavin Keane, a research design engineer with CISD – the design arm of the Materials Research Institute, was also successful in the funding application for state-of-the-art R&D equipment.

“The new 3D printing system, funded by Enterprise Ireland, will play a vital role in design, prototyping, and manufacturing services within AIT,” he explained. “Our design team is delighted with this opportunity to continue to grow at pace and offer our customers faster turnaround times in the newest materials 3D printing has to offer.”

“The significant funding received from Enterprise Ireland this past year is a huge endorsement of the work that our researchers are carrying out in support of local and national industry,” added Dr Declan Devine, director of the Materials Research Institute.

“Specifically, the scanning thermal microscope funded under the current call will enable us to offer unique testing capabilities in the fields of food packaging and the analysis of pharmaceutical solid dispersions.”

COMAND, which is an open access point for industry and is located within AIT’s Software Research Institute, has also been awarded €240,000 in capital funding to facilitate the purchase of an immersive extended reality (XR) suite with user experience sensing capabilities.

According to Dr Niall Murray, a leading researcher in the field of immersive technologies and a lecturer at AIT, the XR suite will allow for “understanding” via sensing in health, education, tourism, and manufacturing.

Dr Murray, who is also a Science Foundation Ireland-funded investigator in the ADAPT and CONFIRM national research centres, says the cutting-edge technology will be of huge benefit to both industry and postgraduate students studying at the college.

AIT is one of ten higher education institutes to have secured funding under the €6 million Enterprise Ireland Capital Fund which aims to increase the levels of interactions between the technological higher education sector and industry.

The goal of the programme is to encourage more companies to engage in R&D, pilot manufacturing capability for new product/process development, enhanced technology validation and testing capabilities, testbed generation and enhanced training potential for key industry staff on emerging technologies.

Access to critical, leading-edge equipment and infrastructure is considered instrumental in helping the industry build resilience and remain globally competitive – particularly in the face of challenges such as those posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The awardees of the Enterprise Ireland capital funding were selected through a rigorous evaluation process.

This will be based on eligibility criteria for the call which included a strong track record of industry engagement, a significant industrial need for the new equipment, and space to service and maintain the equipment according to international standards.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking