Finding funding: How the Walton Institute can help boost industry-driven research
The Walton Institute is rich in the use of enabling technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining. And it's these highly technical and intricate innovations that can help companies and industry learn more about their sectors and future areas of growth.
Kevin Doolin, executive director at the institute, has 27 different funding streams that can provide companies with opportunities to delve into the nature of their industries and learn how to integrate technologies into products and services.
'We can help companies find funding to make this research happen and it can be anything from a small piece of work like an innovation voucher funded by Enterprise Ireland for €5,000 or €10,000, up to multi-million-euro research development projects that are typically funded through the European Commission.
'There's a huge number of opportunities out there for any organisation that's doing research, particularly in an academic context like ourselves, as we're researching things that are 15 or 20 years into the future,' he said. 'We looked recently at how you would embed data in people's DNA, which I know sounds strange, but if you take say 1g of good bacteria and put a strand of DNA in there with data in it, you can store the equivalent of 70 billion books worth of information, which is phenomenal.'
And the groundbreaking research doesn't end there.'We can see the future way down the line. A future where data centres are the thing of the past, for example, and humans could be the new data centres,' added Doolin.
'Or for example, my kids in the future or their kids, could go to the doctor and the doctor could take a blood sample and they could have their entire family medical history as data in their blood. There are a lot of practical applications.
'And then we're doing a lot of research in other areas, like quantum communications. We're building one of Ireland's first quantum communication infrastructures where we can send data over long distances using photons. This is really blue-sky research, but then we also do a lot more near-time research like the years and years of research we have around social media and artificial intelligence, that companies can leverage straight away.'
Doolin says that a good example of the latter is a free training course he ran for companies in his current additional role as president of the Waterford Chamber of Commerce, where two webinars were held around securing funding for research and Chat GPT for small businesses.
'We had 231 people sign up for the course on Chat GPT because everyone hears about it but don't know how to use it,' he explained. 'There's a phenomenal interest in new technologies and how they can help companies.'
Doolin himself never fails to be impressed by work at the Walton Institute. He started out at Ericsson in Athlone before working in the IDA in Waterford where he helped companies get R&D grants to move away from traditional manufacturing. He joined Telecommunications Software & Systems Group in 2004, which was later renamed Walton Institute in 2014, so a career concentrating on innovative technologies was more than a calling.
'I remember smart technologies and assisted living was a big thing. It sounds like old hat now, but back in the day it was a really big deal,' he continued. 'When I worked in Ericsson my last role was product management for the roll out of their 2G phone system and I remember getting a mobile phone and saying I didn't want it and would never use it.
'I've always been a bit of a nerd and got my first computer at 10 so I always had a strong interest in technology. The environment we're in means we have to secure our own funding here at the Walton Institute. We have around 80 staff and we're constantly writing proposals through fundamental science for Research Ireland or applied research through the European Commission, or even commercial research through Enterprise Ireland.
'So there's a constant pressure to continue to secure funding to keep our jobs going so we constantly have to innovate and be future-thinking so we can sell it to companies and show them the technology and what they can do with their own products and services. But we've secured up to €150 million in funding to date and we've managed to maintain that.'
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