Cabinet Secretary Simon Chase MP has announced the appointment of Professor Dame Angela McLean DBE FRS as the new Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA). Dame Angela, who is currently Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence, was selected by the Prime Minister following an open competition and will be [...]
Scientists from across the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) gathered at Stormont Castle on 13th February to mark International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The special occasion, hosted by Head of Civil Service Jayne Brady, welcomed colleagues from every department and from a diverse spectrum of scientific fields [...]
Belfast City Council has announced proposals for a Smart District that will harness digital innovation to support the transformation of Belfast city centre. The Smart District is one of several initiatives in the council’s new Smart Belfast Urban Innovation Framework. The aim of the framework is to encourage city partners [...]
Armagh Observatory and National Museums NI are among 45 places awarded to museums, science and discovery centres, and changemaker individuals across the UK on new learning and grants programme for 2023 Mindsets + Missions is a new learning and grants programme, funded by UK Research and Innovation, which supports museums [...]
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a new independent research body to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research, has formally launched, coinciding with appointment of 5 new members to the ARIA board, including Nobel Prize winning chemist Professor Sir David MacMillan who will guide the agency in its mission to [...]
A new cross-border health initiative has been launched to create an all-island healthcare SME network to tackle tech implementation and adoption in hospital healthcare settings. Supported by InterTradeIreland’s Synergy initiative, the All-Island MedTech SMEs (AIMS) is being delivered by Health Innovation Hub Ireland (HIHI) and the Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland (HIRANI). AIMs [...]
The Open University (OU) has opened applications for a range of postgraduate courses and short microcredential courses, fully funded through the Department for the Economy’s Skill Up initiative. Hundreds of places are available across 27 courses with savings of up to £3,200 in course fees. Postgraduate courses provide skills and [...]
Matrix will partner with the NI Science Festival which, now in its ninth year, has grown to become the largest celebration of its kind on the island of Ireland and in its relatively short lifespan became one of the leading Science Festivals in the whole of Europe. With over 200 [...]
A new competition, funded by the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) and focused on delivering a sustainable Utilisation of Livestock Slurry, has been launched by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). SBRI provides the public sector with innovative solutions to problems that will drive improvement and allows [...]
A report from a pilot initiative has recommended establishing a public panel to consider how data is used in research, innovation and decision-making in Northern Ireland. This would see Northern Ireland join Scotland and Wales as devolved jurisdictions of the UK with public panels dedicated to considering questions from their unique national contexts, and [...]
A new €74 million programme, funded jointly by the DAERA, UKRI and Science Foundation Ireland, will support large-scale, virtual Centres with the aim of strengthening the research and innovation base across the UK and Ireland, building strategic partnerships across these regions within the areas of climate, and sustainable and resilient [...]
SBRI Wales have just launched three exciting new challenges worth a total of £500k in Phase 1, plus a briefing event that will cover all three. The deadline for all these competitions is December 14th 2022. SBRIs are fully funded competitions which are open to all businesses (sole traders, partnerships [...]