Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris has announced €23 million in funding for 40 postdoctoral researchers, with a particular focus on addressing gender imbalances in academia.
The investment, which is a joint initiative between Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Irish Research Council (IRC), will see 40 early-career researchers, across all disciplines, receive awards of up to €550,000 over a four-year period to develop their research.
In a press statement today, Harris said: “I’m delighted to announce this new initiative to help early-career researchers to lead a research project and develop the essential skills and experience necessary to become research leaders of the future.”
“This investment will focus on addressing gender imbalance in academia and we really want to encourage applications from women researchers.”
While one of the programme’s objectives is to “increase the representation of female researchers in the higher education sector”, the programme is open to all genders. The project includes an initiative which aims to encourage eligible research bodies to seek applications from “excellent female researchers”.
Applicants must have a PhD or equivalent qualification for at least two years at proposal submission, but they must not hold, or have held, a significant peer-reviewed, independent research grant, or award of a similar career stage.
“As we seek to rebuild after COVID-19”, Harris continued, “the work of researchers and scientists will be key to helping the economy recover.”
“We have begun to address the shortfall in funding for research but we have much more to do.”
The funding was provided as part of Budget 2021.
Harris concluded: “I’m pleased to see this new joint programme between SFI and IRC contributing to my department’s objective of fostering enhanced collaboration across our research ecosystem.”
“This builds on previous investment into the sector including the additional funding for PhD IRC Stipends.”
In February, Trinity-based research centres ADAPT and CONNECT became part of a new €193 million investment across five SFI research centres.
The investment will support over 1,000 graduate students, postdoctoral students and Research Fellows. According to SFI, over €91 million of the funding comes from industry partners, in addition to SFI themselves.
This year, Harris also announced the IRC would receive additional funding of €3.2 million per annum to support early-career researchers.
The additional investment saw the IRC postgraduate stipend increased from €16,000 to €18,500 per annum and funding for its post-doctoral researchers also increased.
