Lero Industry Engagements

Lero collaborates with industry through various means. Projects range from large, multinational endeavours to simple tasks that require only a few days of a researcher’s time. Lero is primarily funded through Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI’s) Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) scheme. SFI actively encourages Lero to target its research efforts at real-world problems and to collaborate with companies who benefit from such research.

The CSET Partnership

The formal partners in the current CSET partnership are the University of Limerick, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, National University of Ireland, Galway, Dundalk Institute of Technology; Almir, Fineos, IBM, Information Mosaic, Intel, JBA Consulting, Kugler Maag Cie, Lumension Security, Movidius, QAD, Storm Technology and Vitalograph. Together, we work on projects that range from understanding how to develop software for multi-core (MULTICORE, MANYCORE) and massively-parallel (TAAAP-OS) computers, to considering how to deal with enormous software infrastructures, such as a city’s traffic-light system (TRAFFIC). The overarching theme for these CSET projects is Evolving Critical Systems and each project is geared to assisting our industry partners overcome obstacles in developing and managing critical systems that have to adapt to changing environments. Other companies may apply to join the CSET consortium. They can take part in existing projects if accepted by the existing industry and academic partners, or propose new ones. New projects would, of course, require researchers and therefore extra funding.

European Projects

Lero is also strongly involved with international projects, mainly funded by the European Union through its Framework programme. In the past, Lero has been an active partner in projects covering open source (OPAALS, NEXOF), the internet of services (NESSI) and security (MASTER). Today, Lero researchers, together with their industry and academic partners throughout Europe, are exploring autonomic service components (ASCENS), how to monitor large systems automatically (Fastfix), software services (S-Cube) and how to satisfy critical requirements (CHARTER).

Instigating an EU project proposal and getting it approved is a competitive process. However, it is possible for a company, or an institute like Lero, to become a partner on an existing research project proposal. Many of these proposals establish their consortia through a partner search, so it is possible to find like-minded organizations, without putting too much effort into the application process. The European Union is targeting its research budget to particular areas, such as information & communications technology, nanosciences, energy, the environment, transport, space and security.

Supports Available in Ireland

Within Ireland, both Enterprise Ireland and the IDA provide support for industry to collaborate with academic institutions, such as Lero. Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnership scheme, for instance, offers between 50% and 80% of a project’s costs. Lero’s last such partnership was with Fidelity Investments and Rovsing, exploring agile methods in different environments (GAIA).

The above projects are examples of collaborative research. This is where the company pays a percentage of the development costs – often combining cash contributions with in-kind support, such as internships for students, access to hardware, software, real-life data, or active staff. At the end of the project, if any commercial foreground intellectual property (IP) emerges, the rights are shared among the collaborative partners.

Contract Research

However, companies can also sponsor contract research, where they pay the full, commercial cost of the project and retain complete ownership of any foreground IP. Some funding schemes support this arrangement, such as the European Union’s Research for the Benefit of SMEs programme and Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Voucher scheme.

The Innovation Voucher is a novel funding opportunity available to smaller companies, allowing them to get experience working with an academic institution. This programme gives companies €5,000 to spend on research supplied by a recognized “knowledge provider”, such as Lero. This voucher equates roughly to ten days of a researcher’s time. Lero has completed some interesting research under this scheme, covering process assessments (Action Point), software evaluations (JBA Consulting, DriveRite), investigations into business process tools (DataKraft), green ICT (Action Point) and cloud computing (MV Golden), not to mention producing a proof of concept for a commercial product as a final-year project (Sport Tracker).

Proposing a final-year under-graduate or an M.Sc. project is a very attractive way to get some research carried out. In many cases, these projects can be done with no cost to the company. As well as getting the research done, the company can evaluate the student in action and will be in a better position to decide whether to recruit the person or not at the end of their studies.

The Personal Touch

Funding is also available for individual researchers. The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), through its Enterprise Partnership scheme, will fund two-thirds of a researcher’s costs, if a company agrees to fund the remaining third – a researcher being a postdoctoral fellow (for two years), or a PhD student. There are also opportunities to relocate researchers from different countries to Ireland through the European Union’s Marie Curie scheme.

All company financial contributions to collaborative or contract research projects are tax deductible, making such research a very cost-effective way of exploring emerging technologies or techniques.

Lero is always interested in working with companies to solve real world problems. If you feel that you have an area that would benefit from some in-depth research, please get in touch. We can connect you with researchers, who are acknowledged experts in their field and we can tailor the structure of the project to suit your needs.