DCU Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub

With the world facing a global health crisis unlike any other, DCU established its Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub in May 2020 to provide swift solutions to the challenges of Covid-19. Backed by philanthropic funding from DCU Educational Trust, the Hub brings together DCU’s research strengths to tackle key problems created by the Covid-19 crisis across four main areas: healthcare, technology, the economy and society.

What if a simple low-cost device could detect Covid-19 on surfaces in healthcare settings? Or what if rapid diagnostic technologies could allow frontline healthcare workers to instantly test for Covid-19? What if a reliable antibody test could tell us who has had Covid-19 in Ireland, and who can safely return to work? These are all solutions which DCU’s Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub believes it can deliver to enable society to deal with the challenges of Covid-19, and to facilitate a swifter return to ‘normal’ life.

As the Covid-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across the globe, taking an incredible toll on our health, well-being and economies, people are asking questions about how we can slow the spread of this virus, how we can treat it, how we can continue to educate our children in a world of social distancing, and how businesses will exit this crisis and begin on the road to recovery. Through the DCU Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub, our researchers are uniting to answer these, and many other questions, raised by this national and global crisis.

Below are the 16 multi-disciplinary projects supported by DCU’s new hub to work exclusively on the addressing the challenges of Covid-19.

Healthcare – supporting the healthcare sector in the fight against Covid-19

• Developing a low cost device for the detection of Covid-19 in healthcare settings
• Finding the right antibody test for Ireland
• Shrinking the Covid-19 assay for faster results
• A rapid screening method for finding new therapeutic drugs for Covid-19

Technology – leveraging technology in a Covid-19 world

• Supporting students – transformative online learning
• Supporting educators – moving large, face-to-face classes online

Economy – mitigating the impact on organisations, workers and the economy

• Capturing learning from the frontline response to Covid-19 to learn from good practices, challenges and issues in the fight against Covid-19
• Open source innovation – embracing the idea of external cooperation with experts working together across company and organisational boundaries to develop solutions for the common good
• Learnings from Chief Human Resource Officers in leading organisational responses to Covid-19

Society – tackling societal issues during the Covid-19 crisis

• Communicating Covid-19: translation and trust in a multilingual and multicultural society
• Covid-19 and social mitigation: understanding citizen attitudes and behaviour
• Crisis terminology: Covid-19 related terminology in Irish
• Providing access for the Deaf Community to STEM education during Covid-19
• “PE at Home” – keeping children learning and active through Covid-19
• Autism specific transition resources

For more information on the DCU Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub and each of its projects, please visit dcu.ie/dcu-covid-19-research.