The Institutes of Technology have done well in winning funding under the Government's Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI). The Cycle 2 awards, announced earlier this month supported work at the Institutes in Cork, Dublin and Sligo as lead proposers and as partners in Waterford, Galway-Mayo, Athlone, Limerick, Carlow and Tralee.
Environmental research is at the core of the proposal led by Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), in partnership with the Department of Zoology at University College Cork and NUI Galway's Martin Ryan Institute. The project, which focuses on ecotoxicology, waste reduction and air pollution, won support worth £2 million. Nearly half of this will go into new mass spectroscopy equipment to be installed at CIT's Ecotoxicology Research Unit.
The unit specialises in studying the toxins produced by algal blooms and toxins in shellfish, explained its director, Dr Kevin James, adding, "We currently have the largest biotoxin research unit in Europe."
It has 12 full time PhD and post doctoral researchers and the new funding, £1.2 million of which will be used by Dr James' research group, will bring in another six PhD students and two more post docs.
The heavy capital content of the project, £800,000, will be used for an advanced mass spectrometry unit to be installed at CIT, he said. "The instrument will be the first of its kind in Ireland," he added. Similar systems are currently in use on the continent for dioxin testing, testing for very low levels of drugs in athletes and other chemical identification work. "It really is designed for the detection of trace amounts of organic contaminants in anything."
The World Health Organisation often sets contamination levels as low as one part per billion, he said. "So you have to develop analytical methods that are better than that and that is what we are attempting to do."
The funding will enable the CIT research unit to increase its work in analysing toxins in water and shellfish. The group has discovered a number of new toxins and this work would continue. Dr James also expects the research to expand into other areas, examining contaminants in the general environment such as dioxins.
The WHO is sponsoring a workshop at CIT later this month. The 10-day training programme discusses the latest analytical techniques in ecotoxicology.
The remaining £800,000 going to CIT environmental research will fund work on waste reduction, overseen by the Department of Chemical Engineering, and air pollution, handled by the Department of Physics.
For some years the Clean Technology Unit within Chemical Engineering has worked with local companies to reduce waste outflow. The Department of Physics is developing new detection systems for air pollutants.