The Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) is located in the South East Region of the Republic of Ireland. It is one of Ireland’s leading Institutes of Technology and is highly committed to being a research-led institute, recognised for its distinctive, high quality centres of research. WIT has approximately 450 full-time academic staff members, approximately 214 of this cohort actively engage in research. Research activity has been a key defining feature of WIT since early in its development and WIT Academics have added hugely to the development of a strong research culture through individual effort and collaboration. Crucially, this has resulted in research informing teaching and curriculum development across the Institute. WIT sees itself as one of the leaders in research in the Institute of Technology (IoT) sector. In the past 12 years WIT has secured in excess of €130m in competitive research funding. The Institute has secured funding from all of the major funding agencies including: The European Commission’s (FP4, FP5, FP6, FP7 and Horizon 2020); Science Foundation Ireland’s Research Frontiers, Strategic Research Cluster and Research Centre programmes; The Higher Education Authority’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) cycles 3 and 4; Government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food, COFORD; and the Irish Research Councils. Within WIT there are three Enterprise Ireland (EI) funded Applied Research Enhancement Centres in the areas of applied materials research, telecommunication research and pharmaceutical and biotechnology research. The Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) has pioneered the development of research in the Institute. The group carries out large-scale applied research and commercialisation in communications software services at the Institute. Two further multidisciplinary research centres have been established with the aim of replicating this success: the Pharmaceutical & Molecular Biotechnology Research Centre (PMBRC) and the Eco-Innovation Research Centre (EIRC).
The Office of the Head of Research & Innovation supports the development and delivery of the Institute's Research & Knowledge Strategy, which manages all aspects of externally funded research at the Institute. The Institute first gained the European Commission’s HR Excellence in Research Award in May 2014. The award recognises the practices in place to support researchers' career and professional development in line with the European Charter for Researchers and The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. In January 2017, WIT successfully retained the HR Excellence in Research Award from the European Commission for a further two years. Following an internal self-evaluation, the Institute retains the award at the two-year stage and goes forward with an evolved Action Plan for the 2017-2018 period. Through the effort undertaken to gain and retain the award, WIT has demonstrated commitment to improving the working conditions and career development for research staff.
Participating Entities and Major Infrastructure
Telecommunication Software and Systems Group (TSSG)
Waterford Institute of Technology’s (WIT) research wing Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) is a major driver in the emergence of a telecommunications industry in the South East of Ireland. In the last five years alone, TSSG has secured funding in excess of €12 million under the Seventh EU Framework Programme (FP7) as well as H2020, making it one of the most successful ICT research centres in Ireland.
TSSG has a proven track record in translating world class research into market ready products and services and has established an eco-system of mobile service companies in the South East of Ireland and beyond, creating several hundred jobs directly and indirectly in the last ten years.
TSSG, the ICT centre of excellence, currently consists of over 50 research scientists and engineers, 20 postgraduate students to PhD level and manages an active international network in excess of 450 partners from industry, academic and research institutes spread across 35 countries worldwide.
Through collaboration with industry, TSSG hope to leverage funding to create real job opportunities in strategically important industries such as ICT, pharmaceutical and healthcare and advanced manufacturing. The aim of TSSG is to work closely with industry to create new jobs through the development of our core research, strong connectivity with indigenous industry as well as large multinationals, supporting high potential start-ups and partnerships with other institutes. TSSG has created a critical mass of ICT industries in the South East of Ireland and will continue to be a hub for telecommunications excellence both in Ireland and abroad.
The TSSG house and operate their own Data Centre facility to support over 50 concurrently active ICT research projects through the provisioning of resources that are essential for high computation simulations and modeling. The Data Centre was designed for functional modularity, with separate rooms for servers, networking equipment, UPSs and batteries, with the generator and cooling equipment located outside. The facility has an IT power load of 300kW, with cabinets engineered to house 30kW of IT equipment. The TSSG Data Centre currently supports over 160 physical servers, providing more than 1,000 CPU cores for processing and 400 virtual servers for cloud computing. In addition, there is over ½ PB (512 TB) of Data Storage, and ~3,000 network ports. All of which provide a high-level of interconnectivity and flexibility for TSSG as well as EU partner’s research projects. This infrastructure is currently critical for the basic research of the PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows in the TSSG. The TSSG data centre will be used in GLADIATOR to conduct the simulation as well as modelling work.
Representative Publications & Projects
Participating Personnel
