UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY

"Ireland is actively building a connected national ecosystem for artificial intelligence (AI), where enterprise, research, and the public sector work together to drive innovation and tackle major economic, environmental and societal challenges. This collaboration supports Ireland's twin transition goals, digital and green transformation, across sectors like energy, agriculture, biodiversity, climate, healthcare, smart cities, Space, deeptech and manufacturing. AI is a core part of Ireland's national digital strategy, ""AI – Here for Good"", and is now closely linked with efforts in advanced computing, data governance, quantum technologies, space, semiconductors, and skills development. As the use of AI grows, there is an increasing need to provide businesses, researchers, and public sector bodies with the tools, infrastructure, and expert support they need to build and scale AI solutions. The AI Factory Antenna in Ireland (AIF IRL-Antenna) will serve as the central hub for connecting and supporting Ireland's AI ecosystem. It will offer access to national and European AI infrastructure—such as secure data environments, AI Sandboxes, AI-optimised HPC resources and data spaces—and help users make the most of AI through hands-on support, user-friendly tools, and tailored training for all skill levels. AIF IRL-Antenna will link with AI Factory France (AI2F), network with the rest of the EuroHPC AI Factory and Antenna network, and will be Ireland's link to the wider European AI ecosystem, connecting with the AI Factories and Antennas network, EuroHPC National Competence Centres, Centres of Excellence and European Digital Innovation Hubs. Led by ICHEC, Ireland's national centre for high-performance computing (HPC) and data platforms, and working in partnership with CeADAR, Ireland's centre for applied AI, AIF IRL-Antenna will engage closely with startups, SMEs, public sector bodies, and researchers—helping them adopt, develop, and scale AI for real-world impact."

EC contribution:

EUR 3.5M

Start:

2026-04-01

End:

2029-03-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-JU-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2025-AIFA-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101263091)

FAME is a joint effort of world-class experts in data management, data technologies, the data economy, and digital finance to develop, deploy and launch to the global market a unique, trustworthy, energy-efficient, and secure federated data marketplace for Embedded Finance (EmFi). The FAME marketplace will alleviate the proclaimed limitations of centralized cloud marketplaces towards demonstrating the full potential of the data economy. In this direction, the project will enhance a state of the art data marketplace infrastructure (i.e., H2020 i3-Market marketplace) with novel functionalities in three complementary directions namely: • Secure, interoperable, and regulatory compliant data exchange across multiple federated cloud-based data providers in-line with emerging European initiatives like GAIA-X. • Decentralized, programmable, data assets trading and pricing leveraging blockchain tokenization techniques (including support for accruing data assets value in NFTs). • Integration of trusted and Energy Efficient (EE) analytics based on novel technologies such as Quantitative Explainable AI, Situation Aware Explainability (SAX), incremental EE analytics, and edge analytics. FAME will become operational in a federated cloud environment with multiple providers of EmFi data assets, including datasets, AI/ML models, and more. It will become interconnected with more than 12 data marketplaces that are operated by the project partners, as well as with other data infrastructures that will support the implementation of 7 pilots. Through this process, the catalog of the FAME marketplace will be populated with a critical mass of 1000+ data assets. Furthermore, FAME will establish a Learning Center (LC) for tech and non-tech users, as this is a key prerequisite for unlocking the potential of the data economy. FAME will build a vibrant community of EmFi stakeholders around the FAME platform, which will serve as a catalyst for the sustainability of the project’s results.

EC contribution:

EUR 800k

Start:

2023-01-01

End:

2025-12-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-IA

Call:

HORIZON-CL4-2022-DATA-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101092639)

To reach net-zero emissions by 2050, annual clean energy deployment needs to triple by 2030. Two major challenges hinder progress: grid operators lack the tools to manage distributed energy resources effectively, and citizens are not equipped to effectively participate in energy markets, particularly in peer-to-peer trading, which would foster individual investment in DERs. While the EU has established a legal framework for energy communities, its implementation has been restrictive, leading to energy communities based on predetermined, community-level prices and effectively peer-to-market rather than true P2P trading. The INTELLIGENT project will provide advanced P2P technology and demonstrate its benefits in 4 diverse EU communities to encourage regulators in EU member states to empower more advanced local energy sharing and trading. INTELLIGENT’s comprehensive P2P trading infrastructure includes interoperable decentralised energy exchange components, secure data exchange, and optimised trading and flexibility management for citizens and grid operators. These tools will be open source and protocol and regulation-agnostic, customisable for specific market requirements.The project leverages and extends the capabilities of the GSY DEX, an open-source P2P exchange software, which employs blockchain technology to enable grid-aware, secure, and automated exchange while fully accounting for network constraints. Innovations centres on a bottom-up, asset-based energy market design with sophisticated, AI/ML and blockchain-powered trading and flexibility mechanisms, supported by dynamic grid fee models and interoperability with grid operators, asset management and other related services. . INTELLIGENT's goal is to advance P2P energy trading technology, making it more accessible, secure, and efficient to optimise the economic and environmental benefits for citizens, while supporting grid operators to better address grid stability and congestion management.

EC contribution:

EUR 365k

Start:

2024-12-01

End:

2027-11-30

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-IA

Call:

HORIZON-CL5-2023-D3-03

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101160678)

DataGenChrono brings together 12 international partners from eight countries—world-class experts in human genomics, data science, sleep, chronobiology, strategic science communication and career development—to advance understanding of the genetic foundations of sleep and circadian biology in mental health. The network will train 11 Doctoral Candidates, forming an excellent, collaborative cohort of researchers who will discover the biological bases of mental health addressing disorders that are a major public health challenge in Europe and worldwide. The research programme objectives of DataGenChrono are to: 1) Identify novel genetic influences on sleep and circadian dysfunction linked to poor mental health across populations and diagnostic groups. 2) Uncover causal relationships between sleep/circadian dysfunction and mental health symptoms across the lifespan. 3) Apply cutting-edge data science, sleep/activity monitoring, and genetically informed approaches to develop novel pathways for sleep and circadian interventions in clinical care and public health. 4) Enhance international engagement, visibility and impact through coordinated dissemination, outreach, and stakeholder partnerships, ensuring findings reach scientific, clinical, policy and public audiences. The DataGenChrono programme provides excellent, interdisciplinary research projects within highly attractive institutional environments. Candidates will gain - world-class scientific training - exposure to diverse research and future workplaces - embedded engagement, career development, transferrable skills and networking opportunities across Europe and worldwide. From recruitment to graduation, the DataGenChrono programme ensures the highest-quality PhD training and excellent science, fostering a connected, high-performing cohort that will leave a lasting contribution in both research and the wider community, fully aligned with the European Commission’s Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training.

EC contribution:

EUR 341k

Start:

2027-01-01

End:

2030-12-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN

Call:

HORIZON-MSCA-2025-DN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101311411)

RUMEN-INNOVATE will establish a pioneering Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network that advances sustainable ruminant agriculture through microbiome-based innovations. Building on extensive existing datasets, this network will train the next generation of scientists to revolutionise direct-fed microbial applications and sustainable ruminant production. The programme operates through three integrated pillars: Discovery & Prediction using machine learning and multi-omics to identify key microbiome-host interactions; Validation & Mechanistic Understanding through controlled studies and synthetic microbial community design; and Translation & Implementation developing real-world diagnostic tools, delivery systems, and on-farm technologies. RUMEN-INNOVATE will train doctoral candidates across European institutions with industry partnerships spanning nutrition companies, dairy, and meat sectors. Researchers will gain expertise in computational biology, experimental validation, and commercial application—creating versatile scientists capable of bridging laboratory discovery with agricultural implementation. The network addresses critical global challenges: feeding a growing population sustainably, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, and developing alternatives to antibiotics in animal agriculture. By advancing microbiome-based solutions, RUMEN-INNOVATE will deliver innovations that enhance animal health, improve production efficiency, and support environmental sustainability. Through international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral collaboration, the network will produce breakthrough technologies, highly skilled researchers, and direct pathways for microbiomics innovations to reach farmers and consumers, positioning Europe as the global leader in ruminant microbiome science.

EC contribution:

EUR 341k

Start:

2027-03-01

End:

2031-02-28

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN

Call:

HORIZON-MSCA-2025-DN-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101311612)

The project proposes both valuable enhancement of current Artificial Intelligence (AI) foundation models and a major upgrade of the European Lexicographic Infrastructure (ELEXIS), which resulted from a Horizon 2020 project with the same name (2018-2022). The upgrade represents a transformative reconstruction of the infrastructure, based on recent developments in AI, in particular those related to the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs). Besides the integration of national, regional, and institutional efforts in the field of lexicography, the new infrastructure will offer upgraded technology, language data, tools, and services that are crucial for improving transformer-based models with multilingual knowledge management originating from high-quality lexicographic resources. The advent of machine-readable knowledge representations (knowledge bases and graphs) that are linguistically sound and can be injected into LLMs, enables the introduction of a virtuous cycle where the relevance of the integrated linguistic knowledge is verified by better outputs from LLM applications that, subsequently, can be used for improving of knowledge representations and language data. To verify the effect of incorporating linguistic knowledge in LLMs, the creation of reliable benchmarks and other means of evaluation of machine-generated output is foreseen as a result. As such, the infrastructure design will contribute to the yet unresolved tasks of Natural Language Understanding. The establishment of a new virtual lexicographic infrastructure will be carried out by a broad and diverse consortium, including partners from all relevant fields: lexicography, Computational Linguistics, and AI. For long-term sustainability, the infrastructure will rely on several prominent infrastructural initiatives: CLARIN and DARIAH, two ESFRI Landmark infrastructures, and ALT-EDIC, as the new pan-European initiative dedicated to the development of European open massively multilingual language models.

EC contribution:

EUR 245k

Start:

2026-06-01

End:

2029-05-31

Status:

SIGNED

Scheme:

HORIZON-RIA

Call:

HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01

View on CORDIS (DOI 10.3030/101293013)