The Irish Universities Association is delighted to announce an Irish University Tour of India starting in The Taj Deccan in Hyderabad on the 4th February. From Hyderabad the universities will progress onto Bangalore on the 6th at The Park on MG road and from there onto New Delhi on the 11th of February at the Hotel Lalit.

Education In Ireland is delighted to partner with the Global Ireland Football Tournament (GIFT 2012) to support their high school American Football games around Dublin in August 2012.

The Global Ireland Football Tournament will be played in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame vs Naval Academy game in Dublin and is attracting over 2,500 participants. Each school will travel with an average of 60 football student athletes, along with cheer groups, marching bands, key campus administrators, family members and alumni. This is the first time that such a large group of American schools and student athletes will travel overseas to compete in American football.

 Dublin City University has been invited to join the prestigious European university network, the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). DCU is the only Irish university to be represented in this network of 11 European universities and three associate partners, from Australia, Mexico and Russia, all of whom share a common commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. The vision of ECIU is to be a global leader in higher education through the collective expertise of the consortium, their dedication to enhancing the learning experience of students, and their focus on fostering economic and social development in the regions.

BioInnovate Ireland is now seeking Expressions of Interest for our medical device innovation Fellowship programme. This programme is modelled on the prestigious and internationally-recognised Biodesign programme offered at Stanford University, California. 

The recruitment of eight Fellows to work in two elite multidisciplinary teams is now underway. These two teams will focus on a specific clinical area, identifying unmet needs, inventing solutions to meet those needs and implementing the solutions, and mapping a route to commercialisation to enable these solutions to enhance patient care. The Fellowship teams will complete an intensive five week training period, commencing in August 2012, before spending two months of clinical immersion working with top surgeons and medical staff in numerous hospitals around Ireland, identifying unmet clinical needs.

UL spin-out, ALR Innovations was named the Best High Growth Company at InterTradeIreland’s annual All-island Seedcorn Business Competition.  The event is the largest business competition on the island. As the Best High Growth Company on the island, ALR Innovations has won the overall prize of €100,000.

ALR Innovations, a University of Limerick spin out company supplies a specialised recycling technology for LCD displays which removes the hazardous materials from waste displays in a fast, efficient and automated process. The technology is currently unchallenged in the market and provides a unique solution for the problem of LCD recycling for European and worldwide markets. The technology, which emerged from Environmental Protection Agency funded research under the Science, Technology, Research and Innovation for the Environment (STRIVE) programme, was patented by the University of Limerick's Technology Transfer Office and licensed to ALR Innovations.

Over the last four years the University of Limerick in collaboration with the China Scholarship Council (CSC) has hosted 12 Chinese PhDstudents as part of the CSC International PhD Scholarship programme.  These students have joined the Materials and Surface Science Institute, the Carbolea Research Group, the Interactive Design Centre, the Department of Politics and Public Administration and the Centre for Applied Languages Studies.

Institute of Technology Carlow , 1st December 2011 - Ten senior representatives from one of Russia’s oldest and most prestigious National Research Universities, Belgorod State University, are in the Institute of Technology Carlow this week to participate in an Advanced Training Programme on Biotechnology Research and Development, which has been organised and presented by the members of IT Carlow’s School of Science.

Dr David Dowling, Head of the School of Science at IT Carlow, says that “this visit, by the most senior members of the Department of Biotechnology at Belgorod State University to IT Carlow presents a major opportunity to collaborate in the area of environmental and industrial biotechnology and marks a milestone in the international bonds being forged by the Institute at the highest level of academic research worldwide.”

Unique agreement signed today will create student mobility between Ireland and Ontario

Institutes of Technology Ireland (IOTI) today (Monday 28th November 2011) signed an agreement in Toronto with Colleges Ontario which will see up to 1,000 Canadian students coming to Ireland from September 2012 to study in Irish Institutes.

Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) has signed an agreement with a leading Brazilian university which will promote student exchanges between Ireland and Brazil.

The memorandum of understanding was signed today at the Euro-Pós education fair in São Paulo, Brazil. AIT is one of six Irish colleges exhibiting at the event on an Education in Ireland stand. The agreement was witnessed by the Irish Ambassador to Brazil, Frank Sheridan.

Professor John Boland, Director of CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded nanoscience institute based at Trinity College Dublin and Professor of Chemistry, was presented with a top international award for his contributions to the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. 

Professor Boland was named Laureate of the 2011 ACSIN Nanoscience Prize for his outstanding work in the development and application of scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy and in the use of these tools to advance our understanding of chemical and physical phenomena of materials.

The ACSIN Nanoscience Prize is awarded every two years and recognises superior achievements and visionary work in the field of nanoscience.  It was presented to Professor Boland at the ACSIN-11 conference in St. Petersburg, Russia on October 6th last.