€50m investment in ADAPT could make Ireland a world leader in the next generation of digital content creation
The Government has announced a €50m expansion of the ADAPT Research Centre for Digital Content Technology at Trinity College Dublin in a move that could make Ireland a world leader in the next generation of digital content creation.
ADAPT will focus on developing next-generation digital content technologies that aim to enhance people’s lives by helping to analyse, personalise and deliver digital content more effectively for businesses and individuals.
ADAPT is being supported by the Irish government through a Science Foundation Ireland investment of €24m. This funding is to be leveraged with an additional €26m from 19 industry partners.
‘Enterprises and individuals are being overwhelmed by the volume, variety and fragmented delivery of digital content across apps, mobile devices and the vast array of media streams’
– PROF VINCENT WADE, ADAPT
“This funding demonstrates the continued commitment shown by government to establish Ireland as a leading location for next-generation digital content technologies,” said the Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation, Damien English TD, who announced the investment this morning (13 January).
“It will assist in powering an innovative and enterprising economy and help to create high-tech, high-quality employment opportunities in the future.”
Navigating the waves of digital content
According to the director of ADAPT and professor of Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin, Vincent Wade, the digital age has created a flow of online content that some companies and individuals find overwhelming to manage.
He explained that the development of new technologies aimed at tackling this wave of online content will empower individuals and industries to be more efficient and expand their global reach as content becomes more inclusive across languages and personalised to an individual’s needs.
“Enterprises and individuals are being overwhelmed by the volume, variety and fragmented delivery of digital content across apps, mobile devices and the vast array of media streams,” Prof Wade said.
“ADAPT is a unique research centre focused on the entire value chain of content – from dynamically extracting the meaning from global content streams and translating across language barriers, to personalising the content delivery and facilitating advanced user interaction. Using its world leading expertise, ADAPT is researching new ways for enterprises and individuals to rapidly gain advantage in the competitive global digital marketplace.”
ADAPT already works with industry partners from large multinationals such as Intel, PayPal, and Huawei, to SMEs such as Air Learning, Iconic and Xanadu and plans to work with other industry partners to diversify and strengthen its research.
“We believe ADAPT is ideally positioned to nurture real collaboration across industry and academia with its dedication to expanding opportunities in priority sectors for Ireland, including ICT, localisation, financial services, e-commerce, media, entertainment and games, life sciences, digital culture and humanities, and e-learning/e-education,” said Prof Mark Ferguson, director general of Science Foundation Ireland and the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Irish Government.
Trinity Library in Dublin image via Shutterstock
