Ireland has supported me at every stage of my career
Professor Valeria Nicolosi’s first experience of Ireland was when she moved to Dublin from her native Italy to do her PhD in Trinity College Dublin.
It was the start of a stellar academic career that saw Valeria return to Ireland to grow her lab and become recognised as one of the top nanomaterials researchers in the world.
“Ireland has supported me at every stage of my career,” she says. “The funding mechanisms and the access I had to industry collaboration have enabled me to thrive here in a way that I could not have done in other places.”
After she finished her doctorate with Professor Werner Blau in Trinity, Valeria moved to the University of Oxford, where her talent was quickly recognised with a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Fellowship, and she was headhunted by several major universities in the UK.
But Valeria knew that Ireland could support her as an early-career researcher, and in 2012 she returned to her roots, applying her skills to lead a new high-tech microscopy facility in the AMBER Research Ireland Centre for Material Science at Trinity College Dublin, then funded under Science Foundation Ireland.
“I had memories of a wonderful collaborative place,” she says. “I love the country, and even then I considered Ireland as my home. I had beautiful memories of living here during my PhD, so I was very happy to move back.”
Since then, Valeria has gone from strength to strength, discovering and characterising fundamental properties of layered nanomaterials and how such materials can be applied for more sustainable energy storage and communications.
Now Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy in Trinity College Dublin, Valeria has won numerous national and international awards and published more than 260 high-impact-papers, and since 2018 she has ranked annually in the top one percent of the world’s most influential researchers, as determined by Web of Science.
“Ireland gave me the best environment to grow my career, it provided the right infrastructure or the right environment for me to be able to grow my science fully 360 degrees,” she says. “There were no roadblocks based on my age or stage as an early-career researcher.”
Valeria’s early funding in turn opened the door for her to bring in non-exchequer funding, including eight European Research Council grants - one Starting, one Consolidator and six Proof of Concept.
“Not only could I get support to do the science, I found that through the Research Ireland AMBER and I-FORM Centres I was also able to work with industry partners, and license the technologies for application,” she says.
Her research and advocacy has seen Valeria win numerous awards, including the RDS/Intel Prize for Nanoscience (2012), the World Economic Forum Young Scientist (2013), EU Woman in Technology Award (2013), Women Business Forum Women of the Decade in Science & Innovation 2018 and the honorary decoration of “Cavaliere” in the Order “Stella d’Italia” in 2021 by the President of the Italian Republic.
Ireland was the springboard for it all, according to Valeria.
“I had access to funding programmes, to collaborators, to industry and to Europe,” she says. “All these doors opened for me in Ireland.”
Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless TD, recently announced the launch of Global Talent Ireland, a bold new initiative to attract outstanding international research leaders to Irish Higher Education Institutions and public research bodies.
Managed by Research Ireland, Global Talent Ireland will support the recruitment of both mid-career rising stars and established research leaders. The programme will fund research across all disciplines within Research Ireland’s remit, with a focus on strategic areas of importance to Ireland, and provides the resources needed to establish or relocate world-class research teams in Ireland.
A two-stage application process begins with an Expression of Interest (EoI) due by 28 August 2025, followed by a full proposal deadline in October 2025. Full details can be found at Global Talent Ireland - Research Ireland.