Trinity’s ADAPT centre has been named one of the recipients of half a million euro in funding from Facebook’s parent company Meta.
Meta is investing €500,000 in Irish institutions for research projects into privacy protection, data sharing and data governance.
The funding will form part of Empower, an academic and industry research programme run by four Science Foundation Ireland research centres, including ADAPT.
The funding was announced ahead of Data Privacy Day, which is tomorrow, January 28th.
In a press statement, Director of Empower Prof Markus Helfert of Maynooth University said: “The investment from Meta supports innovative research projects addressing significant challenges of data governance helping to realise Empower’s ambition of establishing leading practices in data governance.”
“This will form the foundation, technologies and key approaches of a trusted global data ecosystem, with positive societal impact”, Helfert said. “As the amount of data increases, data ecosystems need to be governed effectively driving complex information supply chains.”
Dan Hayden, Meta’s director of privacy policy, added in a press statement: “The role of technology in our lives and society is evolving faster than ever before. It is critical that we work hard to put privacy first and work with people at the forefront of emerging technologies and scientific understanding to find solutions to current and future industry challenges. We are delighted to be collaborating with leading Irish research institutions and investing in this important area of research.”
The Empower research programme will run for four years and was launched in November 2021. Data sharing is not part of the agreement and Meta will not be sharing data with Empower for these research projects.
The ADAPT research centre focuses on pioneering new forms of proactive, scalable and integrated AI-driven digital media technology, with the long-term goal of a balanced digital society by 2030. It is co-ordinated by Trinity and co-hosted by Dublin City University, with partner institutions including University College Dublin, Technological University Dublin, Maynooth University, Munster Technological University, Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest, and NUI Galway.
Facebook Inc, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among others, rebranded as Meta last October.
At the time, the company said its new focus would be the “metaverse”, a shared virtual environment. Wired described the metaverse as “characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you’re not playing – as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn’t require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR”.
