Celebrating One Year as Walton Institute

This month, we celebrate the first anniversary of the Walton Institute. The awarding of the research institute designation one year ago acknowledged and recognised the outstanding research strengths and capabilities of Walton and its team. The research institute, the first of its kind in the South East, is named after Dungarvan native Dr Ernest Walton, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for being the first to split the atom.

Walton Institute undertakes cutting edge research, blending fundamental science with real world commercial applications. The aim of the Institute is to investigate futuristic next-generation technologies, to verify their capabilities and applicability for today’s society, and to work in collaboration with industry to ensure their commercialisation. The Walton Institute encourages inter-disciplinary research with prominent national and international reputation and competitiveness firmly positioning Waterford as Ireland’s Innovation Capital. Among Walton’s specialist areas are Precision Agriculture, Future Health, Intelligent Transport Systems, Smart Energy, Cybersecurity and Privacy, and The Brain Initiative.

The Figures

Walton has over 80 researchers, works with 320 Irish industry partners, 800 global partners, is part of four Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centres, and is also an Enterprise Ireland Technology Gateway.

To date WIT has competitively secured over €17.93 million during the course of the H2020 funding programme, with €15.9 million of this competitively won by Walton Institute. Since the beginning of the H2020 programme in 2014, WIT has secured funding for 33 projects in the areas of biotechnology, smart agriculture, social sciences and ICT, of these 28 projects were secured by Walton, having a total project value of €188m and 11 of these were co-ordinated by Walton. Walton Institute also secured €513k via Open Calls.

The TSSG Technology Gateway is the commercial interface of Walton Institute and is here to support start-ups, micro-SMEs, and scaling SMEs in direct industry projects. In partnership with Enterprise Ireland, the gateway’s role is to deliver ICT technology solutions through collaboration on projects which are close to the market needs of the Irish industry.

In the past year the TSSG Technology gateway has serviced over 57 industry projects, including the Lingaun Valley Augmented Reality (AR) App with Kilkenny Leader Partnership, which enables visitors to experience three high prestige heritage-tourism sites in a unique way.

Ongoing Investment

Ever at the forefront of innovation, Walton continues to expand upon the facilities and the advanced technology and equipment it has available to industry in the South East, and under the Enterprise Ireland Capital Call the TSSG Technology Gateway at Walton successfully secured funding for a Digital Photogrammetry Unit, Satellite Communications equipment, and Quantum equipment.

In addition, new innovation labs, such as the Mixed Reality Lab for Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) testing are opening up new and exciting areas of research within Walton. The final finishing touches are being put into the e-Textile Innovation Living Laboratory and Satcoms Testbed which will all be open to industrial companies later this year.

Life Changing Projects

Walton continues to lead ground-breaking and life changing projects such as FAITH and PRIME. FAITH is to provide an ‘AI Angel’ app that remotely analyses depression markers, such as changes in activity, outlook, sleep and appetite in cancer survivors. When a negative trend is detected, an alert can be sent to the patient’s healthcare providers or other caregivers who can then offer support. The FAITH project will be going to trials later this year.

Meanwhile, PRIME, the First EU FETOpen project co-ordinated by an Institute of Technology, is working to develop an innovative diagnostic-therapeutic treatment for people with epilepsy and other neurological diseases, by implanting engineered biological cells in the brain that will act as bio-computers to treat and suppress impending seizures.

The precision agriculture team within Walton Institute focuses on investigating how technology will transform food production to meet humanity’s demands in future through projects such as DEMETER, SmartAgriHubs and AgROBOfood. In addition to transforming agricultural practices and food production, these projects have multiple environmental use-cases to encourage sustainable farming, reducing our impact on the environment.

The 5GMediaHUB project will aid in the development of 5G-powered media applications by offering a fully-featured experimentation facility providing testing and validation.

Walton is collaborating with other departments in WIT and MTU-Cork on the Society, Economy and Environment (SEE) Space network, which focuses on education and research in Quantum Communications and Cybersecurity, Earth Observation and Space 4.0. 

Recognition

The work of Walton’s PSES division was recognised this year, for their design and development of the H2020 DEMETER website, which won the 2021 .eu Web Awards in the Better World Category.

In addition, Walton Institute was shortlisted in the Technology and Innovation Category of the Waterford Business Awards 2021 for the CoronaVRus app. The virtual reality team in Walton developed CoronaVRus, a virtual reality (VR) application aimed at children that can be used as an educational tool to showcase, educate and demonstrate COVID-19 safety guidelines in an intuitive manner. The application is Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) friendly and offers a fun method of education to build awareness in a safe and interactive environment.