Dr Kate Kiseeva of iCRAG at UCC has been awarded an Irish Research Council Laureate Consolidator Award to the value of €599,926. The award comes as a part of an announcement of investment of almost €24 million in ‘curiosity-driven’ frontier research by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris, T.D. The investment will fund 48 ground-breaking research projects under the Irish Research Council’s Starting and Consolidator Laureate Awards Programme.
Under the scheme, researchers will receive funding for cutting-edge projects equally divided across the fields of the humanities; physical sciences and engineering; life sciences; and social sciences. Their research areas range from new approaches to treatment for diseases such as cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 6G technology development, interculturalism in rural Ireland, changing storm patterns and the communication of climate science.
The Laureate programme encompasses two streams of funding, namely ‘starting’ funding for early-career researchers who are to receive €400,000 each and ‘consolidator’ funding for mid-career researchers who are to receive €600,000 each.
Dr Kiseeva's award is entitled "Oxidation state and fluid speciation in the deep Earth" (DEEPEARTH) and has been awarded the funding in the Physical Sciences and Engineering panel.
Announcing the awards, Minister Harris said:
“I am delighted to announce the winners of the second round of the Irish Research Council’s Starting and Consolidator Laureate Awards Programme and I congratulate each of the awardees. It is a pleasure to also welcome the Ukrainian researcher who came to Ireland from the war in Ukraine, and who will collaborate on one of the newly funded projects through the IRC’s innovative Ukrainian Researchers Scheme.
These talented researchers will no doubt contribute hugely towards the world-class excellence that is the bedrock of our research system in Ireland, pushing the boundaries of research knowledge and finding new discoveries that deepen our understanding of the world around us, by looking to the past, questioning the present, and unlocking our future potential.”