81 studies gain from £4m grant

Eighty-one research projects have been funded under the State's Basic Research Grant programme, which is worth £4 million this year. They range from studies of how earthquakes occur to understanding why cuttlefish change colours.

The scheme is organised by Enterprise Ireland and full details of the funding for 1999 are provided in the current issue of its monthly science and technology magazine, Technology Ireland.

There were a record number of applicants this year, 460 compared with 350 last year. The adjudicators backed a smaller number of projects, however, down 10 to 81 for 1999. This reduced the success rate for participating applicants but it did increase the average grant per project, which stands at £50,000.

Women researchers continue to have an increasing impact on the competition, with almost one-third, 24, leading projects that received a grant. A special effort is also made to support young researchers, and 14 projects announced in this round of grants are overseen by young researchers.

Life sciences make up the largest proportion of successful applicants with 29 projects, followed by chemistry with 18, physics and engineering at 15, mathematics and computing at 12, and earth sciences with seven.

Three large colleges, UCD with 24 grants, Trinity with 22 and UCC with 10 claim almost 70 per cent of the total. Size isn't everything, however, as NUI Maynooth won seven grants and the Institutes of Technology in Athlone and in Limerick also won funding.

The projects themselves cover a remarkable range of subjects, from an analysis at UCD of gamma ray bursts coming from deep space to a study of nitrate levels along the river Barrow, pursued by a researcher at Trinity.

NUI Galway scientists are refining a high resolution camera that can be used both in astronomy and in medical imaging, and a DCU researcher is studying the chemistry of the sulphur-containing emissions from vehicle exhausts.