New €2.9m Lero Postdoctoral Fellowships Programme to Develop World-class Software Expertise

Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, is to invest €2.9 million, creating 16 postdoctoral fellowships. The programme will develop world-class software expertise to facilitate responsible innovation focusing on privacy, trust, inclusion and fairness.

Lero director Professor Brian Fitzgerald of University of Limerick is coordinating the SyMeCo (Systems, Methods, Context) research training programme. It is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the European Commission’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) COFUND programme.

“Fellowship programmes like SyMeCo are vital to the Irish research landscape attracting top researchers to the European Union, and significantly to Ireland and Limerick. It is testament to Lero’s research reputation, and its record in developing and delivering fellowship programmes that the centre has been awarded this funding. We look forward to hosting SyMeCo fellows here at University of Limerick and of course supporting Lero in co-ordinating such a significant project,” said Professor Norelee Kennedy, Vice President Research, UL.

While SyMeCo will be coordinated from UL, fellowships will be available at all 12 of Lero’s partner universities and institutes of technology. The programme is designed to attract outstanding international researchers from the fields of computer science, software engineering, information systems and human-computer interaction.

“We are delighted to have been funded for the SyMeCo programme. These fellowships will bring together leading researchers from across the world and when recruited, will contribute significantly to Lero’s and Ireland’s research agenda, engaging with experienced researchers and industry partners across the country. All 16 fellows will be highly-skilled future research leaders and we have no doubt that they will be much sought after by industry, the public sector and academia,” Professor Fitzgerald commented.

“The key research strands underpinning SyMeCo reinforce Lero’s own key research strands, systems – what we build; methods – how we build these systems; and context – for the world we want. The programme proposes a transformative agenda that takes account of the ever-changing software development landscape while also seeking to shape it,” he concluded.

During their two-year fellowship, participants will receive discipline-specific skills training to assist career development and will be provided with a comprehensive set of courses to improve their transferrable skills and diversify their employment options.