Tag: seed

Research Ireland and Gas Networks Ireland announce collaboration agreement

Research Ireland, Ireland’s competitive research and innovation agency, and Gas Networks Ireland, operator of the national gas network, have today formally launched a new €2.7 million research and innovation challenge to drive pioneering, STEM-led solutions that will support Ireland’s transition to a low carbon energy future.

The ‘Research Ireland – Gas Networks Ireland Innovation Challenge’ invites multidisciplinary research teams to develop breakthrough technologies in renewable gas, energy system integration and artificial intelligence. The challenge fund will support transformative innovations with the potential to decarbonise the national gas network and contribute to climate action targets.

This joint initiative, co-funded by Research Ireland and by Gas Networks Ireland through its Gas Innovation Fund, is a phased funding programme. Successful teams from eligible research bodies in Ireland will be awarded up to €200,000 and will work through a series of phases to develop their idea. An overall prize award of €1 million will be available to the team that demonstrates the highest potential for transformative impact. The prize will enable the winning team to generate high-impact research and accelerate the development of sustainable energy technologies.

The structure of the Programme is based on the Research Ireland Future Innovator Prize Sustainable Development Goals Challenge Programme, and will comprise three phases:

  • Concept (six months’ duration, with successful teams securing up to €50,000)
  • Seed (12 months’ duration, with teams securing up to €150,000), and:
  • Prize (up to 24 months, with teams completing for an overall prize of €1 million).

Welcoming the announcement, Interim CEO at Research Ireland, Celine Fitzgerald, commented:

“We are delighted to be forging a partnership with Gas Networks Ireland on matters of such importance to our country and, indeed, our planet. Both agencies recognise the importance of decarbonisation of Ireland’s gas network. The Research Ireland – Gas Networks Ireland Innovation Challenge 2025 will support research projects that have potential to generate STEM-based solutions for utilisation by the renewable gas industry, giving rise to national impact in the journey to achieve carbon neutrality. 

“We look forward to working in partnership with Gas Networks Ireland, and to seeing the outcomes stemming from our co-funded investment in Ireland’s brightest research talent.”

Commenting on the collaboration agreement, Chief Operations Officer at Gas Networks Ireland, Bobby Gleeson, stated:

“This landmark collaboration aligns with Ireland’s national climate ambitions and our strategy to transition to a net zero gas network by 2045”.

“The Innovation Challenge is a powerful example of how targeted research can support national priorities – from climate action to economic development and will help enable the best minds in Irish research to develop practical, scalable solutions for integrating renewable gases and intelligent technologies into our energy infrastructure. This is a significant investment in the future of Ireland’s energy system – and in the talent that will help shape it.”

The Research Ireland – Gas Networks Ireland Innovation Challenge has two overarching challenge themes to guide the collaborative engagement and research activity under this programme call, namely:

  1. The Energy System Integration Challenge: This seeks to support the development of solutions to accelerate the optimisation and integration of the energy system in Ireland’s transition to a low carbon economy. There are two broad themes under this Challenge: (a) the integration of renewable gases at a local and regional level; and (b) the development of Artificial Intelligence-based solutions for intelligent gas network performance diagnostics.
  2. The Biomethane and Biohydrogen Challenge will seek to support the development of solutions which improve the efficiency, efficacy and commercial viability of (1) biomethane and (2) biohydrogen production, including extraction and utilisation of the byproducts.

The call for applications is now open to eligible research teams across Ireland. Full details are available here: Research Ireland Gas Networks Ireland Innovation Challenge – Research Ireland.

Smart Docklands Announces €50,000 seed fund investment into Four Pilot Projects to Address Community Need

Smart Docklands is delighted to announce the winners of its first Call for Pilots. The programme is delivered in partnership between Dublin City Council and the CONNECT Research Ireland Centre for Future Networks headquartered at Trinity College Dublin

Smart Docklands is one of Dublin’s flagship smart districts – a unique collaboration across academia, industry and local government to advocate for and pilot community centred technology innovations.

This Call for Pilots aims to tackle key community priorities identified through a community survey that was carried out in late 2023 and early 2024 where insights were gathered from over 300 responses. Smart Docklands ensures that smart tech is not just being deployed for ‘tech’s sake’, the programme works to engage directly with the community who live in, work in or visit the Docklands. This is done through in-person events and innovative approaches to community surveys.

After extensive community engagement, followed by a Call for Pilots four projects have now been selected out of 41 applications that were submitted to receive seed funding, with €12,500 allocated to each project. The winning pilots will tackle pressing challenges across environmental monitoring, community development, and antisocial behaviour, aiming to create a more sustainable, inclusive, and enjoyable Docklands for all.

 

Jamie Cudden, Smart City Lead on announcing the pilot winners at an event in the Dublin City Council Innovation Hub in the CHQ said:

“These pilot projects highlight how technology can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. By directly engaging with the community, we’ve chosen initiatives to address the Docklands’ community concerns around sustainability, youth engagement and environmental concerns. We are super excited to be working with such an amazing group of innovators and entrepreneurs who all want to make a difference for the Docklands community!”.

Professor Dan Kilper, Director CONNECT Centre, Trinity College Dublin said: 

“The CONNECT Centre is proud to partner with Smart Docklands on the Pilot Projects, which play an important role in demonstrating the transformative impact technology can have when guided by community needs. These initiatives create solutions that address real challenges and pave the way for a smarter, more sustainable future. The pilot winners’ projects highlight this important work—congratulations to them and to our colleagues at Smart Docklands.”

The four pilot winners are:

  • UTS Technologies – River Liffey Water Sensors: This project introduces a network of sensors along the River Liffey to deliver real-time data on water behaviour, supporting a diverse range of users including kayaking and boating. The aim of this initiative is to bring an improved understanding and actionable insights for users of the river and to support more sustainable river management.
  • UCD – Count Docklands: Deploying a network of citizen science traffic monitoring, low-cost, camera-based traffic counters across the Docklands. This will empower citizen scientists to gather crucial data, supporting Dublin’s transport goals improving community engagement in urban mobility planning and traffic monitoring.
  • UCD – Craft My Street: Highly innovative youth engagement leveraging open-source geospatial data and Minecraft for crowd mapping through interactive multiplayers gaming. This pilot aims to support young people to actively participate in shaping policies and projects that affect their communities.
  • HoloGen – Immersive Graffiti: Leveraging AR/VR technology to teach young people about street art, this project turns illegal tagging into an opportunity for learning and expressing art in a safe virtual space. The aim of which is to reduce illegal graffiti and a boost in creative urban expression.

The Smart Docklands programme established in 2017 has a track record of collaboration where academia, local government, industry, and residents come together to address urban challenges through innovation and deployment of new and emerging technologies. The Call for Pilots is a testament to the programme’s commitment to ensuring that technology serves real community needs.

Smart Docklands’ first Call for Pilots represents a milestone in creating a connected, innovative, and engaged urban environment. By addressing key challenges through collaboration, education, and smart technology, these pilot projects highlight the benefit of what smart districts can achieve.

Smart Docklands extend thanks to Accenture, An Post, IPB Insurance, and National College Ireland for their support in evaluating applications. Their expertise and collaboration have been crucial to ensuring a fair and thorough process, highlighting the power of collective effort.

For more information about Smart Docklands and its initiatives, visit https://smartdocklands.ie/

Kidovo secures seed round for kids interactive learning app

The next generation of children are growing up with digital devices all around them. As a result, they’re spending increasing amounts of time on these devices in passive consumption of content which is leading to a range of development issues. In addressing this pressing concern, fun learning platform Kidovo is today launching with a $1.2 million seed funding round to provide every child (2-8 years old) with personalised interactive learning.

The funding round saw participation from Venture Highway, Amplify PCC, Good Capital, & prominent angels including Ashish Singhal from Coinswitch among others. Using interactivity, Kidovo is aiming to turn passive consumption into active participation from kids, which helps avoid many of the problems prevalent today with kids’ screen time.

Kidovo was founded by Sameer Goyal, ex Amazon & AWS engineer, and Rahul Bhatnagar, ex Uber, Cubical Labs, Amazon. They met while beginning their careers at Amazon over a decade ago. Together, they have a combined experience of over 20 years in the tech industry.

“When Rahul reached out to me, about building an interactive learning platform for kids, I was sure something like this must exist. But I was surprised to see very few options for such content. Further, we both realised the massive size of this problem. This affects most of the kids on the entire planet. We started researching the space and found that there is a massive opportunity to build better learning experiences for kids using the latest technology.” said Sameer Goyal, co-founder of Kidovo.

“We’ve been testing the early versions of the product with a small group of about 60 families as part of our co-builder program since December 2022. While we have been constantly improving the product based on feedback from that program, the platform has already grown to serve 4000 registered families. Further, as a testament to our team’s commitment to improving kids’ learning experience and safety, we have already received kidSAFE COPPA+ certification as well as a 5 star certification from educational app store in just 6 months since our platform accepted its first external user. We are now confident in serving more users on our platform and have begun rolling out our paid subscription plans.”

Recent studies have suggested that kids spend about an hour everyday on Youtube. With shortage of workers in the childcare industry, increasingly these devices are the child’s nanny (Source). Further, since generation alpha is the first generation to grow up around digital devices, parents are increasingly finding it difficult to limit screen time without access to other sources of more meaningful & productive entertainment for children.

The American academy of Pediatrics recommends for children 2 to 5 years of age to limit use to 1 hour per day of high-quality programming, while parents co-view & help children understand the content and help them apply what they learn (Source). Kidovo is designed to provide children with a digital playmate, who would fulfil the above responsibilities when a parent is unavailable to do so.

“We found that existing interactive solutions were too focussed on academic outcomes & hence were unable to engage the child over a long period of time. Further, they lacked the variety of content that would support children as they explore different areas of interest. Therefore, we decided to work together with the best kids content creators and empower them with interactive tools to make more engaging content.” said Rahul Bhatnagar, co-founder of Kidovo.

Since children are spending increasing amounts of time on digital devices, the time they spend practising speaking has gone down leading to speech delay problems. The team has devised an innovative approach to get kids to speak while learning on their platform. One of the forms of interactivity on the platform is where kids are asked questions from the content and they need to speak to answer and get real time feedback almost as if there’s a real life tutor with them. The owl mascot, Ovo, also involves kids in casual conversation to help them build confidence to express themselves.

Kidovo not only helps children with healthier screen time options, but also helps parents participate in their children’s learning journeys. The platform offers parents key moments they might have missed from their kids’ activity on the platform, they can hear their kids speak, see what they drew. Further, parents are offered tips on activities & discussions that they can engage in with their kids based on their activity on the platform.

Kidovo plans to use this investment to move closer to their vision of empowering every child worldwide to reach their full potential through personalised, immersive, and engaging experiences that make learning fun and accessible.