Adapt research centre nets €50m from State and private sector

A research centre that helps pull together digital content has received funding worth €50 million from the State and from private industry.

Adapt, the centre for digital content technology won the research award via Science Foundation Ireland.

The centre is based at Trinity College Dublin and includes academic partners University College Dublin, Dublin City University and Dublin Institute of Technology. It also has 19 industry partners including companies such as Cisco, ebay, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, PayPal and others.

The centre is focused on digital content and how to get the most from it. It involves research into the technology to deliver content but also the hidden content in big data, extracting meaning from global content streams, personalising content delivery and improving user interaction with the data stream, said director and professor of computer science at Trinity, Prof Vincent Wade.

Second round

Users are being overwhelmed by the volume and fragmented delivery of digital content, he said.

“Adapt is researching new ways for enterprises and individuals to rapidly gain advantage in the competitive global digital marketplace,” he said.

This is the second round of foundation funding for the centre, and comes after it completed its first six-year contract.

This second six-year contract will mean €24 million coming from the foundation along with €26 million from 19 industrial partners.

Adapt expects to train 200 postgraduate students over the next six years. It has produced seven spinout companies and expects to deliver 300 tech-based jobs in new spinouts.

The high level of funding demonstrates the continued commitment shown by government to make Ireland an international centre for next generation digital content technologies, said Minister of State for Innovation Damien English.