Research into better treatments for chronic pain, creating a vaccine against the MRSA hospital superbug and making sensors that can watch the brain think are among 24 projects that will share €40 million over the coming five years.

Other projects include mining sea sponges and corals for human medicines, a germ-detection device to ensure food safety and agricultural research that makes use of drones and satellite data.

The 24 projects are the latest to be supported under the Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Programme, with details announced on Wednesday.

The total investment is €40 million and awards range in value from €500,000-€2.7 million.

The money will support the work of 200 researchers, and 39 companies will also be partners in the various projects, the foundation said at the launch.

The awards would “give researchers an opportunity to develop their careers”, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell-O’Connor said at the launch.

The programme would also provide industrial collaborators with an opportunity to tap into research expertise in Irish higher education institutions.

“We are here to commend you,” she told a gathering of the successful researchers at the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin.

The 24 awardees were selected after intensive international peer review and all were “at the pinnacle of scientific excellence”, said foundation director general Prof Mark Ferguson.

The research activity trains scientists, promotes industrial collaboration and will benefit our economy and society, he said.

All of the projects submitted are in priority research areas that are deemed by the Government to be of special importance because of their ability to create jobs, exports and support private sector companies working in Ireland.

SFI has also produced a shortlist of 10 more projects that will be funded if additional money becomes available, the foundation said.

The application success rate in this round of investigator funding was 17 per cent.

This round of funding included €2.3 million which came from other bodies interested in promoting research within their own areas. These organisations included the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy, the Geological Survey of Ireland, the Marine Institute and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Their funding was used to support seven of the 24 projects.

It is hoped that this funding will help to leverage additional money from the EU via its Horizon 2020 research budget, said Ms Mitchell-O’Connor.

Ireland’s own research and innovation policy document Innovation 2020 is closely aligned with EU research policy and this helps researchers who make bids for support from Horizon 2020.

The projects supported demonstrated the “excellent and impactful research” under way here, she said.