Dáil Committee to investigate science funding failures in Ireland

cork | sci-tech | opinion/analysis

Sunday July 13, 2014 12:43

by Corkonian

Visit by Dáil Committee toTyndall National Institute, UCC, Monday 14 July. Questions need to be addressed in regard to departures of iconic researchers following SFI funded research work. In particular the iconic work on the junctionless transistor.

The Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is to visit Tyndall/UCC on Monday 14 July. See
http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/mediazone/pressrele....html

One of Tyndall National Institute's claims to fame is the junctionless transistor. This is a great development. See here for a press release: http://www.tyndall.ie/taxonomy/term/1297/0

UCC and SFI owe a lot to this. It is an iconic piece of work coming from Tyndall National Institute.

It is to be hoped that the Dáil Committee will learn what made Jean-Pierre Colinge, the iconic inventor of this technology, decide that he had had enough with Tyndall, and UCC. Jean-Pierre Colinge left for Taiwan, as did his wife, Cindy Colinge, another iconic scientist from Tyndall.

All iconic scientists and engineers and mathematicians, and everybody else, who comes to Ireland with SFI support will soon enough leave the island for pastures new. They will leave because there is nothing of a long term nature in Irish planning.

Why would any great scientist or mathematician want to stay long in Ireland? As the Irish Times reported recently (6 July) Ireland is bereft of any serious plans for the future. See "Bundestag committee claims Ireland has no plan for growth".
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/bundestag-co...56046

Economist Brian Lucey summarized the implications of the smoke and mirrors in all of this: http://brianmlucey.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/why-the-rus...ties/

The Dáil Committee visiting Tyndall needs to ask the iconic Chief Scientist, Mark Ferguson, whose own fraudulent career has been well documented (see http://educationalstandards.wordpress.com), just why enormous funding is going for people to take with them any and all innovation from Irish shores.