History
Following a Technology Foresight activity managed by Forfás the Irish Government allocated €1.3B under the 2000–2005 National Development Plan to be spend on R&D. SFI was responsible for disbursing €650M of these monies in the targeted strategic areas of ICT and Biotechnology during this period.
After an initial call for research proposals in 2000, the first Director General, Dr William Harris, joined SFI in 2001 leading the organization to the establishment of a range of research programmes from Principal Investigator Awards to large research centers, called Centers for Science & Engineering Technology.
In 2006, under the next National Development Plan, under the Strategy for Science, Technology & Innovation (SSTI), the Irish Government has allotted a further €3.7B to spend on R&D.
Read more about this topic: Science Foundation Ireland
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“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)