The outstanding performance relating to industrial project activities of South Eastern Applied Materials (SEAM), a WIT-based research centre, has led to additional funding from Enterprise Ireland. It has been awarded €900,000 through two Enterprise Ireland programmes. Regarded as one of Ireland’s leading technology gateways, SEAM currently provides assistance to more than 100 companies on materials engineering related aspects, and uses cutting edge technologies such as CT scanner and 3D metal printing to analyse and prototype products. The funding will contribute towards helping many more companies across Ireland innovate and improve products and components. Gearoid Mooney, director of research and innovation at Enterprise Ireland, congratulated SEAM on its performance to date and looks forward to SEAM's increasing connections to companies. “Thanks to a stellar performance in serving industries of wide-ranging sectors, SEAM has been awarded up to an additional €450,000 in funding to expand its industry reach through the Enterprise Ireland Technology Gateway programme,” he said. Dr Ramesh Raghavendra, centre director of SEAM, thanking Enterprise Ireland for this additional funding and its continued support, said: “Our prime focus in SEAM is to advance the cutting edge of innovation bringing novel technologies with a view to transferring the knowledge acquired to Irish based industries. "These additional funds will help strengthen our human resources and expand our services to more industries. Furthermore, this will also assist in delivering our committed action plans set in the South East Action Plan for jobs 2015-17 to drive enterprise and employment growth in the region.” SEAM has also secured a second Innovation Partnership project worth €450,000 with Carten Controls, following the success of its first project with the Waterford-based precision engineering company. The Innovation Partnership programme gives Irish-based companies the opportunity to work with Irish research institutes to develop new and improved products, processes, services, and generate new knowledge and know-how. Declan Irish, of Carten Controls, said: “SEAM offered a unique opportunity to utilise Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to aid in the search for a solution to a long-standing industry issue. SEAM successfully met all the challenges with a new design which included prototypes that achieved a durability rating of more than 20 times the original.”