Dr Peter O'Brien, Head of Photonics Packaging Research at Tyndall National Institute and Deputy Director IPIC, has been honoured with an outstanding Horizon 2020 achievement award for his leadership of the PIXAPP Photonic Integrated Circuits Assembly and Packaging Pilot Line project. Dr O’Brien is one of sixteen individuals who received Horizon 2020 achievement awards at the ‘Ireland’s Champions of EU Research’ event for their projects which exhibited outstanding leadership in their respective programme areas of Horizon 2020.
John Halligan TD, Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development with Julie Sinnamon, CEO of Enterprise Ireland presented the outstanding achievement awards to academic researchers, companies and research organisations that have reached the pinnacle of European research at the event in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin. The awards recognise the immense contribution of the award winners and all project leaders from Ireland to our national success in the €75 billion Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for research and innovation.
The PIXAPP consortium, led by Tyndall at UCC, brings together 18 partners in Ireland, the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Italy and the Czech Republic to establish the world’s first open access photonic integrated circuit (PIC) assembly and packaging pilot line. It combines a highly-interdisciplinary team of leading industrial and research organisations and provides Europe’s SMEs with a unique one-stop-shop, enabling them to exploit the breakthrough advantages of PIC technologies. The €15.5m initiative will help drive EU growth and competitiveness in the global photonics Industry.
At Wednesday’s ceremony, Horizon 2020 Champion awards were also presented to Tyndall researchers recognised as having successfully coordinated a Horizon 2020 project. Those award recipients are:
Brian Corbett for TOP-HIT, a European consortium led by Tyndall, developing novel technology to address the challenge of integrating components of different materials in large volumes at the semi-conductor scale. Funded under the Horizon 2020 programme for Smart System Integration, TOP-HIT runs from 2015 to 2018 and is worth over €5m.
Kafil M. Razeeb for TIPS, a Tyndall led consortium of European researchers to develop intelligent circuits, which can make photonic devices up to 5 times more efficient, resulting in faster data transmission at a lower cost. Also funded under Horizon 2020’s call for Smart Integration Systems, the ‘Thermally Integrated Smart Photonics Systems’ (TIPS) project involves industry and research partners from Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and France.
Simeon Oxizidis for the Horizon 2020 funded NOVICE project which aims to develop an innovative business model for Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) that will provide energy savings to buildings and demand response services to the grid after renovating buildings. Coordinated by the International Energy Research Centre (IERC) at Tyndall, the project brings together partners in Spain, the UK, Greece, Austria, Finland and Germany.