Latest News from the CIT Extended Campus
CIT and WIT Join Forces To Establish Ireland’s First-Ever ‘Space Region’
02 November, 2020
Cork Institute of Technology and Waterford Institute of Technology have come together to form the Society, Economy and Environment (SEE) Space network.
This exciting new partnership builds on the two institutions’ expertise in areas such as cybersecurity, telecommunications, quantum communications, materials science, photonics and advanced manufacturing.
The new research team, headed up by Dr Niall Smith in Cork and Dr Mark White in Waterford, will use space to solve problems that are relevant to the region and the country. Building the Irish Space Coast will attract inward investment from national and international sources while developing stronger links to international space organisations such as the European Space Agency.
This collaboration is ideally positioned to take advantage of the educational, economic and societal benefits of the global space industry. Space 4.0 is a major focus for companies and institutions from the very small to the very large and is projected to be worth €2 trillion by 2030.
CIT President, Dr Barry O’Connor said, “We will work with communities to see how best to use space to solve their issues, to increase their sustainability and improve their competitiveness. We will work to inspire the next generations of scientists and engineers. CIT operates the Blackrock Castle Observatory which has been a leading advocate of Space 4.0 and represented the Higher Education community in the development of the National Space Strategy for Enterprise, 2019-2025”.
WIT President, Professor Willie Donnelly, highlighted the potential impact that this collaboration will have regional economic development. “Bringing together two of Irelands top-performing research institutions to conduct multidisciplinary research and innovation in space will create exciting new funding opportunities particularly in the European Framework which will, in turn, deliver a new generation of advanced technology companies for Ireland and the Southern region. This in turn will provide exciting research and employment opportunities for our students," he said.
Two co-funded PhDs have already been formed under the partnership with both CIT and WIT aiming to co-fund more PhDs and explore options for applications to existing scholarship programmes, including internal competitive scholarship programmes.
The impact of the collaboration will include broadening the career opportunities for students; strengthening the capacity of industry sectors with which CIT and WIT collaborate currently and developing roadmaps for exploiting Space 4.0. The development of new technologies, products and processes will enhance the reputation of both insititutions as centres of leading-edge research as they evolve into their respective technological universities.
