The Infrastructure Call supports the research community in building and sustaining the required infrastructural capacity to accomplish high quality, high impact and innovative research in areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that demonstrably enhance and underpin enterprise competitiveness and societal development in Ireland. Proposals, that are received on foot of the Call are reviewed by an international panel of experts. International peer review ensures that SFI are funding research that is recognised as excellent at an international level, which ensures that Ireland continues to compete globally.
The identities of international expert technical reviewers, who participated in the postal review of applications to SFI’s funding programmes, are not disclosed to ensure that each proposal receives a robust assessment where there can be no contact between the applicant and the reviewer thus guaranteeing impartiality in the review process.
Thirty-four (34) international reviewers took part in the Science Foundation Ireland Research Infrastructure 2021 programme call, all 34 reviewers are Professors in international academic institutions.
The overall areas of expertise of the 34 reviewers is listed below:
Photonics and Optics
Earth Sciences
Energy Systems
Astrophysics
Energy Materials
Materials Science & Engineering
Materials Science and Technology
Materials Science, Materials Engineering and Chemistry.
Chemical Engineering
Analytical Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Science
Computer Engineering, Virtual Reality
Optoelectronics, photonics, lasers
Advanced Computing
Computer Science, Scalable Data Systems and Analytics
Internet of Things, Wireless computing
Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Immunology, Infectious diseases, Gasteroenterology
Biological engineering, Genomics, Systems biology, Cell biology, Medical biotechnology
Biophysics, Medical imaging and Neuroscience
Cell biology, Imaging
Biochemical Engineering, Systems Biology
Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, Biophysics
Precision Agriculture, Biological Systems
Cellular Imaging, Microscopy
Medicine, Surgery and Cancer
Biopharmaceutics, Biomaterials, 2D/3D cell cultures, Drug Delivery, Spectroscopy
Industrial Ecology, Food Systems
Neuroscoence
Cytomics, Biomedical Engineering
Ecological Sciences
Agrotechnology, Food Sciences, Bioprocess Engineering
Microscopy, Imaging, Physics
Life-imaging, microscopy
Genetics, Infectious disease genomics, Environmental Genomics
The number of reviewers for each subject area was selected based on the number of applications in each subject area, and it was ensured that each proposal was reviewed by three expert reviewers.
The international representation of the review panels is as follows: 12 (35%) were based in the UK 6 (18%) were based in the USA, and 16 (47%) were based in the EU.
All reviewers used by SFI are based in international organisations outside of Ireland and do not have any relationship with Irish educational or public sector bodies. Reviewers are appointed as independent experts and are deemed to work in a personal capacity and, in performing the work, do not represent any organisation. All reviewers are required to abide by the SFI Reviewer code of conduct (www.sfi.ie/funding/sfi-policies-and-guidance/review/SFI_-_Reviewer_Code_of_Conduct.pdf).
