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Minister Sherlock Opens the APT Technology Gateway in Athlone Insititute of Technology
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| Pictured at the launch are L-R: Minister for Research & Innovation, Sean Sherlock, TD, APT Gateway Manager, Sean Lyons and Technology Gateway Programme Manager, Enterprise Ireland, Mark Whelan. |
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Séan Sherlock, Minister for Research & Innovation, officially opened the Applied Polymer Technology (APT) Gateway in Athlone Institute of Technology recently. The Gateway is one of a network of 12 Gateway’s funded by Enterprise Ireland. The Gateway will be located within AIT and focus on all aspects of polymer research.
Each of the 12 Gateways in the Technology Gateway programme delivers technology solutions for industry through innovative collaborative projects. The Gateways provide an open access point for industry providing technology expertise which is industry relevant. The Gateways are regionally based and act as a portal to the nationwide expertise in the Technology Gateway Network and the wider Irish Research Infrastructure.
The APT Gateway was officially opened at the All-Ireland New Technology Forum & Society of Plastics Engineers Annual Conference in Athlone recently. The conference was co-hosted by Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT), in association with IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Plastics Ireland and IBEC.
There is a national imperative to support, sustain and create jobs in high value technology industries in Ireland by attracting investment, developing new products and processes and new routes to market. This conference, titled “From Convergence, via Translation, to the Bottom Line - Building Plastics into the Future”, provides regional Irish industry with a unique networking opportunity with global industry leaders to explore new routes to higher profit margins through niche technological advances and new, sustainable, higher value market opportunities. Applied research institutes, such as WIT and AIT, will act as the conduit for these new technology challenges to be realised.
Over the course of the two day conference in Athlone and Waterford, world key opinion leaders and champions of global industry participated in a technical forum where there was major debate and audience participation from more than 400 engineering and science professionals from regional SMEs in the medical device, pharmaceutical, green technology, composites and plastics processing industries.
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