Minister Sherlock announces 24 million euro boost for telecommunications research centre

Minister for Research & Innovation, Séan Sherlock T.D., pictured with Prof. Linda Doyle, Director Centre for Telecommunications Research (CTVR) and John Travers, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland, at the announcement in Cork of Government funding of €19.5million with industry contribution of €4.8million for the CTVR.

Minister for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock T.D., has today (Thursday, May 26^th 2011) announced Government funding of €19.5million, together with an industry contribution of almost €4.8 million, for the Centre for Telecommunications Research (CTVR).

The state funding, provided via Science Foundation Ireland, will directly support 76 high-quality research positions in Ireland’s largest telecommunications research centre.

Making the announcement, Minister Sherlock said “CTVR has been at the forefront of telecommunications network design over the past seven years. The demands on our communication networks increase daily with a multitude of new services and applications coming on stream at an unprecedented pace.”

The Minister added “The networks of the future must be able to keep apace with these demands and accommodate new and, indeed, as yet undeveloped innovations.”

CTVR is being funded under the SFI Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology programme for a five-year term to 2016 and the centre specialises in designing wireless and optical networks for the future.

Industry partners include Alcatel-Lucent / Bell Labs Ireland, Xilinx Research Labs Ireland, Socowave, Eircom / Meteor, Intune Networks, NXP and MA/Com.

Minister Sherlock continued by saying “The involvement and direct contribution of leading industry partners is a strong visible commitment of the value, quality and strategic relevance of the research being undertaken by CTVR. It shows that Ireland continues to be an internationally-recognised location for top-class research allied to the needs of industry.”

Headquartered in Trinity College Dublin, CTVR draws together researchers from six other universities and research institutions, including National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin City University, Tyndall National Institute in Cork, University College Cork and University of Limerick.

Minister Sherlock concluded “CTVR, comprising a diverse range of top-class academic and leading industry partners, is equipped with the necessary expertise and foresight to deliver on the vision of flexible and sustainable networks - and make Ireland one of the world-leaders in this field.”

Welcoming the announcement, Professor Linda Doyle, Director of CTVR, said “We are in a time of unprecedented change, be it in relation to hardware, software, consumer demand levels or user patterns. Developing flexible and adaptable networks that take full account of resources constraints such as energy, bandwidth and manpower, is a key principle of CTVR. The allocation of additional SFI funding from Government will enable the Centre to continue to have significant impact on how the networks of the future are designed, and to tackle key research problems in an area of strategic relevance for Ireland - namely the telecommunications sector.”