Science Foundation Ireland and the Department of Defence invites academic research teams to work with the Irish Defence Forces to develop innovative solutions to challenges across a range of areas that will have beneficial application and strong positive impact potential for Irish society.  

Under the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge, research teams based at eligible Irish research bodies can apply to address one of four challenges, or to propose disruptive ideas for technologies across several areas of interest to the Irish Defence Forces. 

Challenges: Teams are invited to submit applications to address specific challenges identified by the Department of Defence and the Irish Defence Forces. These challenges have specific requirements that should be achieved for solutions to be deemed successful. 

Challenge 1 - Advanced Shelter Concepts

Portable structures are vital in providing shelter to people in humanitarian crises and natural disasters however, in emergency responses, such structures are also used as hospitals, schools, offices, workshops and for vehicle storage/maintenance. These structures are expected to be rapidly portable and robust enough to deal with a range of environmental conditions.  

Under this challenge, applicants are invited to address the following: 

  • Design, prototype and demonstrate manufacture feasibility of a novel, modular, multipurpose shelter structure system. The shelter structure system should permit rapid assembly/disassembly requiring minimal human interaction with low requirements for technical skills or specialised equipment. The shelter structure system should be lightweight, highly portable and provide protection against a range of weather conditions enabling it to be deployed in a variety of operating environments. Especially compelling approaches will incorporate modularity, allowing for easy repurposing or reconfiguration to create more complex structures as needed. Ideal approaches would also consider technology integration whereby services (e.g., power and water), communications or intelligent monitoring of structure or contents, are integrated in the structure.  

Please see the call documentation for further details. 

Challenge 2 - Maritime Situational Awareness

Ireland’s marine territory is vast covering an area of 880,000 km2 making up 16% of the EU’s territorial waters. The size of Ireland’s marine territory presents significant challenges for the Irish Naval Service in maintaining Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA). An increasingly global issue in MSA, that requires immediate attention, is the identification and tracking of so-called dark vessels; vessels (or other maritime “dark” objects) that employ measures to hide their identities, locations and activities. 

Under this challenge, applicants are invited to address the following: 

  • Develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a solution that significantly enhances the Irish Naval Service’s capabilities in Maritime Situational Awareness. The solution should enable detection and localisation of dark vessels to enhance maritime situational awareness, and enable timely and effective response to potentially unsafe or illegal activities. The system may leverage a range of sensing modalities, data sources and approaches to achieve its functionality and performance. Especially compelling solutions will consider integration of data and information from different modes or across various services (e.g., Irish Naval Service, An Garda Siochana, Revenue Commissioners, Irish Coast Guard etc.). Ideal solutions will position the Irish Naval Service as a world-leader in the detection of dark vessels and/or other dark objects on, or below, the sea surface. 

Please see the call documentation for further details. 

Challenge 3 - Search and Rescue

Search and Rescue (SAR) is the search for, and provision of aid to, people who are in distress or imminent danger. Typically, SAR is categorised by domain either as land (incl. mountain, subterranean, rural and urban ground SAR), sea (marine SAR) or air (aeronautical SAR). These different environments and the requirement for operations to be conducted in all weather conditions and at any time, create significant challenges in locating people, and coordinating the delivery of critical assistance to them.  

Under this challenge, applicants are invited to address the following: 

  • Develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a solution that minimises the amount of time to deliver critical assistance to a person in distress either on land or sea, in a range of weather conditions, as part of a SAR operation. The solution should explore the potential for autonomous location of people in these environments and enhance the efficiency of coordination of resources assisting them. Especially compelling approaches should consider how health data from people in distress can be gathered by autonomous location systems and how health data from SAR responders can be monitored to inform SAR operations. Ideal solutions will also consider the integration of resource allocation and coordination, and communications. 

Please see the call documentation for further details. 

Challenge 4 - Aeromedical Emergency Dispatch

Air medical, or Aeromedical, services involve the use of aircraft, usually helicopters, as part of a coordinated emergency response to deliver pre-hospital emergency care at the scene of an accident and critical care to patients during transportation to hospital. The use of aircraft introduces significant speed as part of an emergency response but can increase the complexity of response management owing to specific operational requirements of aircraft, especially when coordination with road-based emergency vehicles is required. 

Under this challenge, applicants are invited to address the following: 

  • Develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a solution that supports rapid, reliable dispatch decisions for aeromedical services and enables intelligent monitoring to support situational adaptiveness. The solution should ensure that overall response times are minimised and the level of patient care delivered is maximised. 

Please see the call documentation for further details. 

Disruptive Ideas: The Department of Defence and the Irish Defence Forces are interested in ideas for disruptive/radical technologies across the areas of:  

  • Medical Technologies,  
  • Disaster Relief,  
  • Peacekeeping,  
  • Climate and Sustainability,  
  • Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). 

Under this call, selected teams will be awarded up to €220k and work through a series of phases to develop their ideas to compete for an overall €1M prize award. The winning team must successfully demonstrate sufficient progress toward development of a STEM-based solution to be considered for the prize award. The prize will enable the winning team to continue development and explore deployment of their solution.  

Challenge-based funding (or challenge funding) is a solution-focused approach to research funding that uses a combination of grants, competition, incentive prizes and strict timelines to direct research activities at specific, often complex, problems. It focuses on finding the most innovative and impactful solutions using competitive processes to incentivize innovators. SFI’s approach to challenge funding places strong emphasis on: 

  • Interdisciplinarity and Teamwork – The complex nature of challenges requires experts from different disciplines to work effectively together. SFI’s challenge funding programmes strongly encourage interdisciplinary teams to apply.  As part of applications to this programme, teams should highlight interdisciplinarity and the advantage it gives them. 
  • Engagement and Validation – Engaging with stakeholders, beneficiaries and end-users of research in an area relevant to a challenge is critical to understanding and exploring the nature and boundaries of specific problems, in testing assumptions and developing new perspectives. It is also crucial as part of the validation process that solutions are co-created with these groups to ensure they address real needs.     
  • Acceleration – Working at pace facilitates both extensive engagement and efficient exploration and modification of ideas based on learnings. This approach is encouraged in challenge-based funding through the use of strict, often stage-gated or phased, timelines and competitive processes involving incentives such as prizes.  

The overarching ambition of the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge is to develop new technologies aligned with national defence policy that also have potential to deliver significant societal impact in Ireland. The specific objectives of the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge are: 

  • To promote the development of new technologies that support missions and capabilities aligned with national defence policy; 
  • To accelerate the development and demonstration of technologies that have broad potential for utilisation and impact across the Defence Organisation with positive impact for Irish society; 
  • To raise awareness of the role that STEM research plays in addressing Defence Organisation capability requirements; 
  • To foster collaboration between the Defence Organisation, researchers and Research Performing Organisations (RPOs). 

These objectives are underpinned by those of the SFI Future Innovator Prize which are: 

  • To support the development of novel, potentially disruptive, technologies to address significant national and global challenges; 
  • To support the formation of high-performance, interdisciplinary teams based on integration of diverse STEM disciplines and complementary skillsets; 
  • To promote the convergence of knowledge, practice and methods from different disciplines and diverse sectors; 
  • To promote engagement between researchers and stakeholders/beneficiaries of research; 
  • To accelerate societal impact from publicly funded research. 

The SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge is intended to support interdisciplinary and collaborative research teams. It is expected that teams will encompass a range of technical (both scientific and engineering) and non-technical skills to address activities associated with problem understanding and solution development. 

Applications to the programme will be accepted from applicant teams comprising two researchers who are either at established or postdoctoral (incl. Research Fellow) career stage based at an eligible research body.  

As indicated in SFI’s Gender Strategy, SFI is committed to removing and mitigating any existing or perceived factors that may limit the participation of women in STEM careers. As such, women are strongly encouraged to apply to this programme. 

Applications to the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge must identify a core applicant team comprising: 

  • Team Lead (Lead Applicant) - It is expected that the Team Lead will have responsibility for managing the activities of the team, will provide technical leadership and have overall responsibility for delivery of research programme objectives. 
  • Team Co-Lead (Co-Applicant) - It is expected that the Team Co-Lead will provide technical leadership as part of the research programme but should not have the same technical/disciplinary background as that of the Team Lead. 

Under the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge, following successful application, a Defence Organisation (DefOrg) Liaison will be assigned to work with the Team Lead and Co-Lead. The DefOrg Liaison is expected to be integral to the team and will work as part of the team to provide insights as well as organisational, operational or mission context to support the team in understanding and validating problems, and the development of a solution. It is anticipated that the DefOrg Liaison will, through their participation as a core team member, assist in establishing an innovation culture with the Defence Organisation and garner support and buy-in that will assist the team in planning for potential future deployment/demonstration.    

Teams successful at application stage will have the opportunity to expand during the course of their award and be able to recruit additional team members (e.g., at postgraduate or postdoctoral career stage) or collaborators (e.g., researchers, beneficiaries, end-users).  Applications may reference individuals outside the core team who are anticipated to play a future role as members of the challenge team. In such cases, it is important to highlight the discipline and skill set that these individuals will bring to the team. Consideration should also be given to the broader challenge/solution context which may require input from experts in disciplines outside of STEM such as the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS). 

For the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge, applications will be accepted where the Lead Applicant and Co-Applicant satisfy the following eligibility criteria: 

  • Be a member of academic staff of an eligible research body (permanent or with a contract that covers the period of the award),  

or 

  • Be a contract researcher with a contract that covers the period of the award (contract may be subject to receipt of the award). 

and 

  • Hold a PhD or equivalent. Please consult the SFI Policy on PhD Equivalence for further information.  

Applications will not be accepted where the lead applicant or co-applicant is a postgraduate researcher (e.g., MSc, MEng or PhD student). 

NOTE: Members of the Core Team (Lead Applicant and Co-Applicant) are permitted to be named on only one application to the programme. Core Team members may not be named in the Core Team of applications to concurrent, open calls of the SFI challenge programmes. They may, however, participate in an application through inclusion in the broader challenge team. Applicants who are already Lead or Co-Lead on an active SFI challenge award (including a National Challenge Fund award) may be required to provide a plan to SFI as to how they will manage concurrent awards if successful. 

There are three phases to the programme - Concept, Seed and Prize Award:  

Phases-Defence-Org-(2).png

 

The deadline for submission of applications to this call will be 6th September 2024 (13:00, Dublin, local time). Applications must be submitted through SFI’s Grants Management System SESAME. SESAME will be open for applications on May 20th.  

Applicants should carefully review the following call documentation including eligibility information before preparing an application. Applicants must use the templates provided below and adhere to all guidelines.  

Open Days

Registrations are now open for the SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge 2024 Call Open Days. These open days will give researchers an opportunity to visit facilities and view equipment relevant to the challenges under the call. Details of the open days are provided below. The deadline for registration of attendance is 21st of August 2024.

Challenge 1 – Advanced Shelter Concepts: Baldonnel Aerodrome Base, 27th August 2024
Challenge 2 – Maritime Situational Awareness: Haulbowline Naval Base, 23rd August 2024
Challenge 3 – Search and Rescue: Greystones Civil Defence Unit, 28th August 2024
Challenge 4 – Aeromedical Emergency Dispatch: Baldonnel Aerodrome Base, 27th August 2024
Register here

Webinar

The SFI-Defence Organisation Innovation Challenge 2024 Information Webinar is availabe here.

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Informational webinar for the 2024 SFI Defence-Organisation Innovation Challenge Funding Call.