A €58 million research centre, the Advanced Materials and Bio-Engineering Research Centre (AMBER), has been officially launched today with the aim of positioning Ireland as a global leader in the areas of materials and medical device development for industry. The Centre is funded by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) in the amount of €35 million. This funding is leveraged with an additional €23 million from 18 industry partners. AMBER will work to translate science into new discoveries and devices for a range of sectors, particularly ICT, medical devices and industrial technologies. Almost 50 per cent of IDA jobs wins are connected to SFI research projects – that is almost 6,000 jobs per year over recent years. Therefore, if Ireland is to achieve the level of job-creation we need, we must ensure that our science and research spending is properly targeted at employment opportunities. Speaking at the launch, Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said: “As part of the Action Plan for Jobs, we’re making a series of changes to achieve this, including the new SFI centres programme which will focus our spending in this area on seven large-scale research centres, which can attract industry funding and compete with the best in the world. 
The establishment of AMBER is a key part of this plan – nanoscience and materials science are areas where Ireland ranks well inside the top ten internationally for research.” AMBER is an academia-industry research consortium dedicated to developing new materials and medical devices which includes the development of novel silicon and magnetic memory devices which will impact communication devices like mobile phones; medical implant coatings which will improve patient care, for example hip implants and other products such as thermoelectric devices. Staff at the research centre will carry out research in broad areas: development of enhanced nanoscale electronic devices for data processing and memory applications; new materials to support innovation in medical devices and delivery systems, implants based on novel therapies, and regenerative tissue engineering; novel materials and processing for new products in areas such as the bottling industry, solar energy, medical devices, medical diagnostics and chemical and biological filtration and novel formulations and packaging to improve the distribution of pharmaceuticals. The AMBER Research Centre is led by Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with University College Cork and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. AMBER will directly support 99 jobs and there is potential for further job creation.