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Think rt a m s g n i y d u t s f d o n a g n i k n i h T e s o ? o h e c g e l l o c n i e c n e i sc GMIT !

The Department of Life & Physical Sciences at GMIT offers the following honours degrees: l APPLIED FRESHWATER & MARINE BIOLOGY

GA 780

l APPLIED BIOLOGY & BIOPHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE GA 781 l CHEMICAL & PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE

GA 782

l PHYSICS & INSTRUMENTATION

GA 783

l MEDICAL SCIENCE

GA785

l FORENSIC SCIENCE & ANALYSIS

GA786

BE MORE THAN JUST A NUMBER !

While other colleges may have a few hundred students in year 1, we target approximately 100 students for our first year intake for the above courses combined, and furthermore students are in groups of 16 for laboratory work.

This ensures the best of both worlds – the low student numbers provide an excellent teaching environment and help ensure that you are successful in your studies. While, at the same time, you are in a college of over 6000 students in the student capital of Ireland!

DO YOU WANT TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY ?

In GMIT our courses are unique in that students do project work from year 1 onwards. With many miniprojects and a number of major projects completed over the course of your degree you will learn vital skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and project management – skills much sought after by employers.

Practical work also forms a large element of our courses, and students gain excellent experience in

completing laboratory practicals in state of the art laboratories. Also, with many marks going for lab work, you can have accumulated a large percentage of your final mark before you sit any exams.

Other features of our courses:

WORK PLACEMENT IN ALL OUR COURSES

Paid work placement is extremely valuable in providing work experience and job opportunities – many companies recruit the students that they have taken on for industrial placement.

APPLIED NATURE OF OUR COURSES

The course material is designed in conjunction with employers and our courses are all applied in nature – giving our students an advantage when starting their career.

MODULARIZED COURSES

This allows students more choice in which subjects they study.

JOBS

Our students continue to enjoy a relatively high employment rate upon graduation. The applied nature of our courses, the high amount of project work and practical work and the fact that industrial placement is a feature of ALL our courses ensures that our students are best placed to gain employment and develop rewarding careers upon graduation.

More Info?

Phone: 091 742178 E Mail: science@gmit.ie Web: www.gmit.ie/science

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THE BRAIN CHEMIST

John Lowry, Prof of Chemistry at NUIM, had planned to become an astrophysicist like his hero Carl Sagan, but then, as Seán Duke reports, he became more interested in the chemistry of the human brain.

D

epression, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia are all diseases of the brain, and can destroy the lives of sufferers and their families.

Drug therapies exist – though not for Alzheimer’s – but these are far from perfect. The drugs work for some, not for others, while side-effects can be severe. A huge road-block preventing the development of better drugs for brain diseases is the fact that little is known about the chemistry of the brain in general or the chemistry of the diseased brain in particular. For example, little is known about what is happening – chemically – in the brain of a person with schizophrenia as he walks around experiencing symptoms.

This ‘knowledge gap’ is something that John Lowry, a softly spoken, talented, and far-sighted scientist is addressing at his laboratory at NUIM. The first step to developing better drugs for brain disease, said John, is to develop a far better understanding of what is happening chemically in the brain, and in the diseased brain, to lay the groundwork for the development of new, and much better, treatments.

This is the area that John is working in, and his lab is one of the few in Europe, and even worldwide that is capable of analyzing brain chemical concentrations in ‘real time’. To do this it is essential to work with animals, typically rats, to get true ‘in vivo’ readings.

PERSONABLE

John is the type of scientist that would give Irish scientists a good name. He is open, personable, accommodating, and understanding of the importance of the media and communicating science to the public. He understands that TV in particular has the power to ignite an interest in science, in young minds. He is a superb researcher, certainly one of Ireland’s best, and works in an area that has the potential to improve real people’s lives beyond measure. His work is recognized internationally, and his lab is wellfunded and resourced. Some in this position might be arrogant, or aloof.

John is the polar opposite.

Perhaps this modesty stems in part from his origins, born into what he describes as a ‘working class’ family in Tullamore. His dad had planned that young John would be signed up sometime shortly after his Intermediate Certificate (now called the Junior Cert) to become a plumber’s apprentice.

His father meant well, of course, and wanted the best for his son, but John had other ideas. He wanted to be a scientist, and that was that. His dad didn’t argue the point, and his education continued to Leaving Cert and on to college.

PASSION

From 6th class in primary school John wanted to be an astrophysicist, studying the great mysteries of the Universe. The inspiration for this ambition came from watching the US TV show, Cosmos, presented by Carl Sagan, the great astronomer and communicator. The show was watched by an estimated 500 million viewers worldwide, and John, like many others, was held spellbound by the skills of this brilliant populariser of science. He also watched repeat showings of BBC’s Horizon show on RTE on Saturday mornings.

But, it was Sagan, more than anyone that lit the fire and passion for science in young John. He devoured any books he could find written by Sagan, including Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science and Dragon’s of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence and pestered the local library to order in more. The brilliance of Sagan, and people like him, such as David Attenborough, says John, are crucial, to generate interest in a subject among young people. It has to be the right person, he says, and TV can provide students with access to these brilliant, gifted communicators.

So, John was already fired with a passion for science by the time he entered secondary school at the CBS in Tullamore. After the Intermediate Cert, where he took science as a single subject, same as today, he decided he wanted to take all three main science subjects for leaving certificate, but

John collaborates with scientists from abroad, and on his visit to China he was presented with a ‘good luck’ cake. he ran into opposition. The school authorities felt that no-one should take on the three science subjects as it would be too much, and John was pressurized into dropping physics in favour of economics. That decision stood for a week, after which John went back and took physics, supported by the school Principal, who was also his athletics coach and a friend. He went on to prove the doubters wrong, and did very well in his Leaving in all three science subjects, something he puts down to his love of science.

OPTIONS

After the Leaving, it was time to consider where to go to university. By this time, John, while still interested in astrophysics, was not 100 per cent sure what branch of science that he would ultimately focus on. Wisely, as it turned out, he decided to go to UCD where he felt the ‘Omnibus’ degree on offer, which was broader than what some other universities were offering, would provide him the opportunity to consider all his options.

At UCD, he took physics, chemistry, biology, maths and computer science in his first year. He dropped physics after first year, something he would have never anticipated, and kept chemistry, biology and maths in second year. In third year he chose, chemistry and maths Already it was clear he was gravitating towards a career in chemistry rather than physics or astrophysics as he might have expected, given his early fascination with Sagan’s work.

John got his degree and was certain then that he wanted to go on, and do

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

more research. He loved the idea of working in the lab, and discovering new things, and began looking around for interesting post-graduate opportunities. He went to listen to a few lectures on the subject of neurochemistry by Robert O’Neill, an Irish scientist that had come back to UCD after a period in Oxford University.

“He sold it to me,” John recalls.

RESEARCH

John’s problem-solving skills were needed immediately when he went to Robert’s lab. Today’s PhD candidates expect, from day one, to have access to equipment and start gathering data when they enter a lab. In the late 1980s and early 1990s things were very different. John recalls that he spent the first six months of his PhD working hard, just setting up his equipment, and writing software so that everything would work together, before he collected any data. If he didn’t do this then his PhD wouldn’t happen, he said.

The focus of his PhD was to develop a sensor that could gather information on glucose levels in the brain, in ‘real time’. This was something very new, and potentially very important. He applied for a Marie Curie fellowship, a European Commission funded scheme to encourage post-graduate students to work in a laboratory abroad, and bring the knowledge they gain back to their host country later. It provides the funds for the student, so the university that agree to take the student, do not need to financially support him.

John wanted to go to Oxford University. He wrote an application and was successful, and joined the lab of the “phenomenally inspirational” Dr Marianne Fillenz. For a while, Dr Fillenz didn’t know what to do with John. He told her that he had developed a method to do ‘real time’ measurements of glucose in the brain, but the Oxford lab had their own methods. After he was trained up so that he could do experiments, John started to collect data.

He sat down with Dr Fillenz to analyze the data, and she then realized that what John was doing was a huge step forward, as it provided ‘real time’ data on brain chemical levels.

FUTURE

John does believe that better drugs for brain diseases will be developed in coming decades, but that issues need to be addressed in the pharmaceutical

industry for that to happen. At the moment, the drug development business model is under threat, as even ‘big pharma’ giants cannot sustain losses, should a drug fail in clinical trials. If a drug fails at a late stage it could mean losses of well over €500,000, which is too big a risk.

What will happen in future years, he believes, is that big pharma will only want to develop drugs that have excellent pre-clinical data, so that the risk of a drug failing at an advanced stage of the clinical trial process – where drugs are tested with humans – is reduced. It is likely that the pre-clinical drug development work will be done by smaller biotech companies, and this represents an opportunity for future ‘biotech’ entrepreneurs.

John himself has got involved in the commercial side of things, with the setting up of Blue Box Sensors, a spinout from NUIM, based on his research work, in 2009. The company declares on its website: “We produce implantable micro sensors that allow long-term measurements of NO, O2 or glucose in awake and freely moving animals.”

ADVICE

His advice for anyone that is considering doing science in college is, firstly, to be sure that there is an interest, and ideally, a passion for

science. If that is in place, then science is a good career option, and can help students get a job, or to get interviews, even in the current climate. A postgrad degree can move someone up even a notch higher, he says.

In hindsight, he says, he might well have signed up to do astrophysics, had there been an astrophysics only degree option available in 1984 when he entered college. In light of what direction his career later took that might well have been a mistake, he says. For this reason, he advises students today to be careful about choosing highly specialized single subject degrees. If an 18-year old knows exactly what he wants to do, then fine, but if a person has a general love of science, but is not sure what he likes best, then a broader degree is the way to go. That way a student can ‘test the waters’ and specialize later.

Back in 1984, entering college, John couldn’t have predicted his career path to date. He started out wanting to be an astrophysicist looking at the Universe on a large scale, and ended up studying a smaller Universe, said John. “Because the complexities of the brain, I think, certainly equal the complexities of the Universe. It is a Universe in its own right,” he said.

THE MATERIALS MASTER

By working on fundamental physics, Seamus Davies is preparing the way for a significant break-through in delivery of electrical power. Seán Duke reports how a scientist from Cork has become a high level researcher in the US .

I

magine a laptop that works 1,000 faster than today? Or an electrical power grid that loses almost no electricity during power transmission, and is 99 per cent energy efficient?

These things will become possible in the future if scientists can develop superconducting materials that operate at room temperature. These materials have a number of amazing properties, that can be exploited, but now they only operate at very low temperatures.

This is the kind of problem that Seamus Davies, Prof of Physics at Cornell University, and a native of Skibberean works on each day – a challenge he finds incredibly exciting.

Sadly, mass emigration has returned to Irish shores, but Seamus was part of the last great huge exodus out of Ireland in the 1980s. He attended UCC from 1979 to 1982, where he recalled the coursework as challenging and where the students took their studies very seriously. He left Ireland in 1983, heading for the University of California Berkeley, in the city of Oakland in the ‘Bay Area’. This move followed a well-trodden path for many UCC physics graduates. Seamus was collected at the airport by Stephen Fahy, who was then studying for his PhD at Berkeley, and today is the Associate Prof of Physics at UCC.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

Seamus remembers being first interested in science at the age of six.

The trigger was curiosity about the world, and how it operates as it does.

By the time he was 13, an aspiration to become a scientist had turned into a definite goal. He got his secondary education at St Fachtna’s in Skibbereen and recalls science teaching there as superb.

He was specifically interested in physics. He applied for and was accepted into UCC, which had earned a reputation for having an extremely high quality physics program.

The success of Seamus, and many others like him of the 1980s generation, shows that emigration, while perhaps not what most Irish scientists want to do, does, at least, open up the possibility of a new life, and achieving great things. There are many un-heralded Irish-born scientists abroad, doing superb work and Seamus is definitely one of those. His experience shows that a science degree and PhD from Ireland are a license to the world.

BERKELEY

Certainly, there are worse places an ambitious young Irish scientist could have ended up than Berkeley, a truly

world-class university, famous in particular for its prowess in physics, astrophysics and engineering. When an opportunity arose to go there, Seamus grabbed it, and he recalls the time he spent there from ’83 to ’89 as “wonderful” and “the best opportunity of my life”. Seamus was interested in ‘fundamental physics’, the type of physics that doesn’t necessarily have a ‘real world’ application. In many countries, including, Ireland funding for such work doesn’t exist. The US is one of the exceptions.

Seamus completed his PhD in Berkeley in 1989. He had a tremendous time, and loved every minute. Now, with the doctorate finished, it was decision time. Should he return home to Ireland or stay? He was offered a job as an Assistant Professor at Berkeley, and that made his mind up to stay in the US. In any case, if he returned home, it would have been virtually impossible to get funding to support his ‘fundamental’ line of research.

There were growing opportunities for scientists in Ireland, even back in ’89, but the research being funded, then as now, was research that could yield an economic return in the short or medium term. But for researchers like Seamus, who want to explore

‘basic’ science that might only have a long term pay-off, if at all, there were few opportunities.

The approach in Ireland, despite all the talk about innovation and becoming world-class research leaders, is the same today as it was 20 years ago. The agencies that fund science

DCU FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH Since DCU’s foundation, its Faculty of Science and Health has maintained an enviable record of success and growth, with innovative and interdisciplinary degree courses, that now encompass academic disciplines as diverse as physics and psychology. Also many of its courses have affiliations to or are recognised by external professional bodies, for example, the Institute of Actuaries and the Teaching Council of Ireland.

INTRA , DCU’s paid relevant work experience programme continues to be a key feature of the courses offered by the Faculty, ensuring that its graduates have the experience and skills most sought after by Irish and international employers.

Mathematics

DC126 - BSc in Actuarial Mathematics DC127 - Common Entry into Actuarial, Financial and Mathematical Sciences

Health and Human Performance

DC202 - BSc in Sport Science and Health DC204 - BSc in Athletic Therapy and Training DC205 - BSc in Physical Education with Biology

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DC208 - BSc in Psychology DC209 - BSc in Health and Society DC215 - BSc in Nursing (General) DC216 - BSc in Nursing (Psychiatric) DC217 - BSc in Nursing (Intellectual Disability) DC218 - BSc in Children’s and General (Integrated) Nursing

Sciences (Biotechnology, Chemistry and Physics) DC161 - BSc in Analytical Science DC162 - BSc in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences DC166 - BSc in Environmental Science and Health DC167 - BSc in Physics with Astronomy DC168 - BSc in Genetics and Cell Biology DC170 - BSc in Horticulture DC171 - BSc in Applied Physics DC173 - BSc in Physics with Biomedical Sciences DC181 - BSc in Biotechnology DC201 - Common Entry into Science DC203 - BSc in Science Education

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING LIVE SCIENCE www.dcu.ie K LIN

here do not want to support research that is considered expensive, risky and doesn’t pay off quickly. They are not prepared to risk funding truly innovative research. This is why for researchers like Seamus, Ireland has nothing to offer, both back then and still today.

Perhaps wisely then Seamus stayed on in the US, and spent 20 years in Berkeley. “It was fantastic, it felt like 3 or 4 weeks, but it was actually 20 years,” he said. “I met my wife, who is English, from Walden in Essex. She was a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Then we got married and had two boys.” The boys changed everything, as now the couple, neither of whom was from a big city decided they wanted to leave the Bay Area and work in a less expensive area that was ‘better for the kids’.

ITHAECA

That ‘better place’ became Ithaca — a beautiful university town that lies nestled in idyllic countryside in upstate New York, and home to Cornell University. This was a university that had just as famous a reputation in physics as Berkeley. Seamus became Professor of Physics at Cornell, and the family settled quickly finding Ithaca a far easier place to live. Here Seamus became associated with Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, another world-class physics institution, as well as St Andrews University, in Scotland.

Soon, he recommenced his researches into the nature of exotic materials such as super solids, super fluids, and super-conductors. These materials had astonishing properties, he said, with huge potential. Superconductors should not be confused with semi-conductors – the latter being famously associated with microchip manufacturers such as Intel. The semi-conductors made by Intel are based on silicon, and their physical characteristics can be altered by adding impurities, for example. The semiconductors are governed by the laws of physics as we know them, but superconductors do not obey any such laws.

The potential is there, for example, explained Seamus to develop an electrical grid, using super-conducting wires, that is capable of transmitting electrical power with no losses, and absolute perfect efficiency. The current grids lose a lot of power during

transmission, and this, of course, is a waste of a valuable resource, and results in more power usage. Similarly with laptops, there is substantial leakage of electrical power. This is why a laptop tends to heat up over time.

A superconducting laptop would not heat up at all. It would be super power efficient, and it would vastly quick in performing computations.

It might come as a surprise to learn that superconductors have been known to scientists for almost 100 years, but researchers have not been able to harness their amazing capabilities in al that time. The reason for that is that superconductors only work at extremely low temperatures, something in the region of -250C. Until a way can be found to make them operate at room temperature, they will be of little practical use to society.

Seamus says that making super-conductors operate at room temperature is a “profound problem of physics”, but not so profound that it can’t be solved in coming decades.

When that happens then superconductors could be used for all manner of electrical devices, such as computers, laptops, and mobile phones and replace semi-conductors as the material of choice in most devices. But, the breakthrough in super-conductors is highly unlikely to be made here in Ireland, as there is no support for longterm basic research.

Ireland, or any country that is serious about its science, should have part of its ‘spend’ supporting research set aside for new ideas with potential, that might just as easily not yield an economic return, says Seamus. “You need some fraction of the portfolio to be associated with risky efforts based on new ideas that haven’t been explored before. There is no guarantee, but if you do nothing, there is a guarantee that you won’t succeed.”

ADVICE

Meanwhile, Seamus’ advice to students that are interested in science, and about to sit their Leaving Certificate in 2011, or 2012 is to be disciplined and focus on an objective. He says there is no better job in the world for providing the means to pursue one’s own curiosity and interests. His least favourite of the job is searching for funding for research.

He adds that professional scientists must be prepared to be highly mobile, and that he has Irish, Chinese, Korean, Israeli, Canadian, German, Portuguese, Taiwanese, Swiss, Scottish, and Indian nationals in his research group at Cornell University. So, his advice to students considering science is to worry about emigration issues. “I would ignore them because any highlevel scientist will have to move from country to country anyway.”

Earth shaking work

Grace Campbell likes to makes the connection between science and education. Tom Kennedy reports.

Q

uite a few students will have met up with Grace Campbell, for she has been doing the rounds, visiting teacher centres and schools to explain all about earthquakes. Grace is involved with the outreach programme run by the Institute of Advanced Studies, a body established just over 70 years ago to foster basic research physics, cosmology and celtic studies.

Although Ireland is not a hot spot for earthquakes, the Institute has always followed a tradition laid down

by Dublin born engineer, Robert Mallet, a 19th century pioneer of seismology, the scientific study of how waves are propagated through the Earth’s crust.

Seismology is of enormous international importance, and Grace

became aware of the Irish connection when Tom Ray from the Institute gave a presentation to students at DCU. At the time, Grace was studying environmental sciences. “I was quite interested in science, teaching, and science education,” she said, and when Tom Ray talked about an outreach programme, she remembers asking if there was any prospect of working in that area.

As luck would have it, an opportunity to work on temporary placement at the Institute did come up, but then Grace had to finish her studies, going on to take a masters in environmental management. At that stage, just as Grace was beginning to wonder what came next, she received

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

a totally unexpected call from “out of the blue”. The Institute. “Would I go back?”

Grace jumped at the chance, and until next May she will be working with teachers and going out to schools to show how instruments can trace the shudders as quakes sent waves around the world. “I am impressed by the dedication of so many teachers,” she said. There is great satisfaction in helping students to learn about science, she observed, but is also a bit disappointed that it is not so easy for a scientist to become a qualified teacher.

“I am definitely going to stay with science,” said Grace, but she likes the idea of staying close to education, and she remembers how important her own teachers were in shaping her attitude to science.

At St Louis in Rathmines, said Grace, “we had great teachers, they were quite young, and they loved what

they were doing.” Students were encouraged to do well, and in first year everyone had to take up science. “Chemistry just grabbed me,” she remarked, and “I had an amazing teacher, Miss Hollorhan.”

Going to university was the next logical step, but as Grace explained, she wanted to keep all her options open. “With common science,” she said, “you get a taste of everything within DCU.” The broad range appealed to Grace, so she went for environmental sciences as it involves a mix of chemistry, physics and biology. “I went for it, and have not looked back since,” she said.

As Grace said of herself, “I love talking, I love debating,” so she enjoys going out and about to fire up interest in science, but take care not to annoy her. Grace has a black belt in karate.

Why

choose the Faculty of

Engineering, Mathematics & Science at Trinity College Dublin?

• • • •

The Faculty is part of the oldest University in Ireland The University Library is one of the largest and best stocked in Europe You can avail of our world class research facilities and laboratories You will be part of a unique student body with over 15,500 students from over 90 different countries • There are over 100 societies and 50 sports clubs for students to join

What can you study?

The Faculty has excellent undergraduate and postgraduate programmes including: • 4 year honours degrees • Taught Postgraduate programmes • Masters programmes • PhDs

Students are offered a variety of options from across 8 Schools: Biochemistry & Immunology Chemistry Computer Science & Statistics Engineering Genetics & Microbiology Natural Sciences Mathematics Physics

The Faculty accommodates a wide range of research interests including: Bioengineering Bioinformatics Energy Immunology Nanoscience Neuroscience The Environment Transport

NEW UG courses include:

• Nanoscience – Physics and Chemistry of Advanced Materials • Geography & Political Sciences • Earth Sciences • Human Health & Disease

Science in TCD

Looking for excellent training in Science with maximum flexibility & choice? See our Science course (TR 071) which offers no less than 17 specialist areas.

www.tcd.ie/Science

Why not see what we can offer YOU by visiting us at:

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Study Science at Something for everyone!

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THE CODE-BREAKER Prof Richard Reilly aims to by-pass our disabilities by using nothing more than thought to command devices. Seán Duke reports.

T

he decision to become a ‘biomedical engineer’ was prompted by witnessing how machines helped a family member cope with kidney disease while he was a teenager.

These days, Richard Reilly, Professor of Neural Engineering at TCD, and a ‘stat’ of the Irish research scene, wants to de-code and intercept the language of the brain and then interact with it, so that people that can’t move their limbs can simply ‘think’ an action, and a machine will perform it. This work will entail gaining greater insights into how the brain communicates, and how that communication might change with age, or disease.

In the future, thanks to people like Richard, it is possible that disabled people, seriously injured people, and people suffering from a range of diseases and disorders, could lead

more independent lives.

Studies show thoughts can now be ‘read’ with a high degree of accuracy. This means that when a person thinks a word, such as ‘yes’, that brain scanning machines can — with an accuracy of up to 90 per cent — translate that thought as ‘yes. It seems reasonable to suppose that the accuracy levels will soon approach 100 per cent.

Right now, a person that has, for example, become completely paralyzed from the neck down, following a car accident, has to rely on others to move their wheelchair or even to turn on the TV and change the channel. In the not-to-distant future, thanks to Prof Reilly and others, it is likely a person could move their own wheelchair

themselves, by thinking ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘forwards’, or ‘backwards’. Likewise the TV could be turned ‘on’ or ‘off’. It might seem basic to the rest of us, but for a paralyzed person this is a huge advance.

There is a growing area of science that is seeking to explore ‘brain computer interfaces’. This can be broadly described as systems that allow the brain to control devices.

Richard describes himself, somewhat surprisingly, as a “big critic” of work on such interfaces, as he believes that most of the researchers doing this

Faculty of Science and Engineering The Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Limerick invites you to share in the experience of our progressive and exciting campus near Limerick City.

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kind of work are only focusing on the applications end of things, the devices or end products, rather than trying to explore and understand more about the neurology of the brain itself. The understanding of the brain must come first, before products Richard believes or it risks giving false hope to people.

SCHOOL

From Dublin, Richard attended St Conleth’s College, Clyde Road, Ballsbridge for both his primary and secondary education. He recalls some fantastic teachers, and small class sizes, with a great physics and chemistry laboratory. Richard’s dad, James Reilly, was an architect and his parents instilled in him from a young age, a love of architecture, and the history and legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. He vividly recalls visiting his father’s office and being fascinated by the set squares, huge drawing boards, and people putting their ideas down on paper. But, something was to happen to spark an interest in science.

When he was 13 or 14 a close family member began to have difficulty with her kidneys, and Richard recalls visiting the hospital with her and seeing how machines purified her blood, transforming her from a lethargic state, to being full of ‘pep’ and ready to go. It made a lasting impression on him. He decided there and then that he would find out about how to get involved with machines that would interact with the body like that. This was the moment when his career path changed from architecture to biomedical engineering.

The family member went on to have a kidney transplant. That was 1982; the year Richard did his Leaving Certificate. The operation was successful and the family member is alive and well today. That year of ’82 was also a year when Ireland – not unlike today – was in the grip of a savage recession, with an unstable government and cuts and job losses everywhere. However, for the teenage Richard none of that mattered. He was determined to pursue his passion, which he had identified by now as the emerging field of biomedical engineering.

He recalls that it would have been far easier for him to do architecture, as with his father he had a route in to the profession and many excellent contacts. But, he chose to follow his passion. He did his research, in the pre-

Internet era, and discovered that there was a UCD electronic engineer called Prof Annraoí de Paor, doing research into how machines could be adapted to help humans. He wrote him a letter of introduction.

COLLEGE

Richard had great expectations of college, and perhaps because he had done extensive homework in advance, in terms of selecting his college and his course, it lived up to his expectations.

His first year was in Belfield, but after that he was based in Merrion Street, in the city centre, where all the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students lived in close proximity, almost “almost falling over each other”. This closeness meant he could see what others were doing in the projects, could ask questions, and decide who he’d like to work with.

He enjoyed Merrion Street greatly.

He chose a final undergraduate research year project working with the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire – which was to prove the start of a career-long connection – in the area of speech and language.

He worked with stroke victims, people that often lose some power of speech.

He built a ‘splint’ that could measure the impact of a person’s tongue on the alveolar ridge on the ridge of the mouth. This indicated how well a person could articulate ‘b’ and ‘c’ sounds. It was an objective measure of articulation that assisted the work of speech therapists.

Richard won a prize for his research project from Hewlett Packard. It was a pivotal moment. Suddenly he was considering further research after his undergraduate degree, rather than going out immediately into the workplace. “That changed everything and I thought maybe this research side of things is interesting,” he recalled.

He stayed on at UCD to do a M.Sc. with Prof Annraoi de Paor, the man he wanted to work with since his final year in school. They worked on an Irish language speech and language synthesizer.

NASA

At this point, Richard’s abilities had started to be noticed, and he was approached by a company called Space Technology Ireland, run by the famous Prof Susan McKenna Lawlor, now retired, at NUI Maynooth. He was offered a job in Paris to work on ‘signal processing’ for scientific satellites – to

be launched by NASA. He was based at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherché scientifique) in Paris at the Observatoire de Meudon. This was “incredibly exciting” and Richard went on to work on two space satellite projects.

In Paris he enjoyed working on big scale projects, with big budgets, and huge planning — where everyone’s work impacted directly on everyone else, and all team members had to work backwards from a launch date.

He spent two and a half years working in Paris, but, after a time, he decided he wanted to get back to his passion — biomedical engineering.

He returned to Ireland to work on a PhD again with Prof de Paor. His research focused on determining whether he could ‘record’ communication signals from the brain.

He again worked with the National Rehabilitation Hospital, primarily with people suffering from Motor Neuron Disease. Richard was now set clearly on the path to an academic career, and a post at UCD followed, and now he is Prof of Neural Engineering, based at TCD.

RESEARCH

Over the past decade or so, Richard’s research has been linked closely with St Vincent’s University Hospital, St James’s and The Mater hospitals, all in Dublin. Recently he has been working with Prof Tim Lynch at the Mater in the area of ‘deep brain stimulation’.

This involves the implantation of a device, something like a pacemaker into a person and linking that device with the brain. The device stimulates the brain with electrical signals. Though researchers don’t fully understand why, this stimulation can greatly improve the physical symptoms of people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and Essential tremor and Dystonia (the latter being a disease often associated in Ireland with Christy Brown, the writer of My Left Foot).

This research is all part of trying to better understand how the brain processes information, and how the various parts of the brain communicate with each other. This understanding could lead to the development of systems that could help disabled people to control machines around them simply by ‘thinking’. The technology to facilitate this happening could be implanted in people’s brains, or connected externally.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

AIT Relaunches its BSc (Hons) in

PHARMACeuTICAL SCIenCe James Roche

T

he PharmaChem industry is undoubtedly Ireland’s most valuable and stable industrial sector. It had exports of €42 billion in 2009 and employed more than 25,000 directly, with a similar number in support roles. With eight of the top ten global PharmaChem companies located here, the industry has an ongoing demand for graduates, frequently offering starting salaries of c€28,000. Based on the increasing demand for graduates who are qualified in pharmacology, biological sciences and chemistry, Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) has revamped its honours degree in pharmaceutical science.

The BSc (Honours) in Pharmaceutical Science will now:

l Feature novel student-centred teaching approaches l Integrate teaching with the research activity of AIT and industry researchers l Utilise new state-of-the-art laboratory facilities l Comprehensively impart all aspects of product development activities l Impart hands-on, life-long skill sets in synthesis, formulation and analysis of all pharmaceutical ingredients l Uncover the challenges faced daily by industry scientists and present solutions, as well as methodologies to apply the

optimal experimental designs to address such challenges l Accept applications from holders of appropriate Level 6 and Level 7 awards for entry to year 3 and year 4 as appropriate

Learn answers to fundamental questions such as:

l Why are some drugs addictive and others create no such dependency? l How are drugs named? l What does strength or potency mean? l How is aspirin made? l How is it made into a tablet or other dosage form? l How does aspirin differ from ibuprofen or paracetamol? l How is it tested and certified for safety?

A Case Study – Would Aspirin Pass Muster Today?

In an early expression of ethnopharmacology, a version of aspirin was extracted from the bark of the willow in medieval times for use as a painkiller. But this form was overly acidic for many uses and a more benign version is now chemically synthesized since the late 1890s. Aspirin is a widely used analgesic (painkiller) and also has antipyretic (fever reducing) and

anti-inflammatory properties. Despite its longevity and simplicity (it is structurally one of the smallest drugs), it continues to surprise and was recently cited to have certain anti-cancer (colon) effects, to go with earlier reports of anti-stroke properties. It is something of an anachronism in that many experts in toxicology would agree that were aspirin to be discovered today, it would possibly fail to satisfy the strict safety criteria laid down and requiring to be satisfied prior to drug approval.

AIT’s BSc (Hons) in Pharmaceutical Science will comprehensively equip the student with the relevant skills to answer, or indeed manage a team of scientists, in seeking to define critical properties for such drugs.

This course is unique in providing an integrated platform for the study of the preparation and fate of drugs in the body.

What Career Paths are Open for Graduates of Pharmaceutical Science?

Previous graduates are currently: Conducting PhD and MSc research in: l Pharmacognosy l Forensic anthropology l Formulation development l Pharmaceutical analysis

In full-time employment as: l Synthetic chemists l Active pharmaceutical ingredient characterisation l Preformulation screening l Chromatographic scientists l Toxicology and bioanalytical specialists

Application to the BSc (Honours) in Pharmaceutical Science is through the CAO (code: AL053). For further information visit

www.ait.ie/science James Roche is a lecturer in the Department of Life and Physical Science, AIT.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

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Already, it is possible for disabled people to control machines, or devices, by thinking, albeit in a limited way.

For example, it is possible to change the channels on the TV, or to turn something on or off. In the USA, it is ethically possible to do research on human volunteers – which is not possible in Europe – and this has enabled researchers to implant dense electrodes in the cortex of living people and ‘translate’ brain patterns.

In Europe, researchers must work with electrodes on the skull of human volunteers. This reduces the options for researchers in Ireland like Richard, but he believes he can still make progress.

In Europe research tends to use 512 electrodes placed around the heads of human volunteers – in a skull cap kind of arrangement. Then experiments can be set up using EEG and fMRI brain scanning – brain imaging methods that have improved greatly

in recent years. These brain scanning machines are providing more and more precise information on the way communication happens within the brain. The idea now is to intercept this information as it travels back and forth around the brain and ‘decode’ it.

therefore, always in close proximity to his students. It is also very satisfying that many of his former students are scattered all over the world, and that this network provides new research opportunities.

JOB

Despite Ireland’s current woes, Richard still believes there is “no comparison” between 1980s and today, in terms of the infrastructure available to support science and the opportunities for researchers to pursue their passion. “When you are at the lab and writing papers and reading papers it is immaterial what is happening outside the door, said Richard. “We may not have as many opportunities for new grants and new things, but there will always be interest and passion for doing things. That won’t change at all.”

Richard loves his work, and to say he simply enjoys it would be inaccurate.

The great thing about being a scientist, he said, is that the scientist can define his own destiny, that there is always an adventure, and when experiments are set up and performed, it is never possible to know what is around the corner. It is important to select research projects carefully, he added, as there is simply not enough time in the day to do everything.

One of the things he enjoys most about his job is interacting with postgraduate students, and being in the lab. He has an office in his lab, and is,

FUTURE

The eternal stove

Marie-Catherine Mousseau reports that Séamus O’Shaughnessy has been developing a way to generate power while cooking.

S

éamus O’ Shaughnessy is working in TCD on a challenging but exciting project: Designing, developing and manufacturing a device that could be used by people in the developing world to produce cheap electricity .

Basically, the idea is to directly exploit the energy that they use to cook their food – that is the heat emitted during biomass combustion in a stove; hence the name of the project: ‘The Eternal Stove.’ “Approximately 80 per cent of the heat generated in a stove is released to the atmosphere,” said Séamus. The device, integrated in the stove, would use what is called a thermoelectric generator (TEG) to convert some of this waste heat directly to electricity.

A TEG module is similar to a solar photo voltaic cell, in that it is used to produce electric current directly from energy. When it is connected to a heat source, some of the heat is absorbed by the material and converted directly to electricity (an effect discovered by

a German, Thomas Johann Seebeck, in 1821 but only exploited in the last 25 years). Séamus ‘s resesearch is all about creating a device which would transfer heat through the TEG to generate electricity , and provide the most amount of electricty for the lowest cost. He explained: “the device will transfer waste heat to the hot side of the TEG. Swift removal of heat from

the cold side of the TEG maintains a flow of energy through the device.”

This flow of energy prevents the TEG from overheating and breakdown.

But most importantly it is some of this energy flow which is converted to electricity.

Séamus enjoys what he is doing.

As he put it, “there is a sense that this research and development could

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

Science @ GMIT, Galway Campus The reasons students give for choosing GMIT@Galway to do their Science degree include:

Field Trips

Students of the Freshwater & Marine Biology course complete numerous fieldtrips at home and abroad.

Projects

Extensive exposure to project work develops skills such as critical thinking, decision making, project management and planning – skills much sought after by employers.

Industrial Placement

Placement at home or abroad: All degree courses now have an industrial placement integrated into the programme. This gives students valuable work experience and helps them develop exciting and well paid careers.

Practicals

Practical laboratory work forms a major part of all programmes – this gives students an excellent science education and helps students build up marks as they progress through each year of study.

Small class sizes

– this helps provide an excellent learning environment.

Good employment record

– look at some of our graduate profiles in the college prospectus.

The applied nature of our courses, and the high level of practical and project work that are an inherent feature of our courses, puts our graduates in a great position to develop exciting careers in a range of areas.

www.gmit.ie/science

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significantly improve the lives of so many people. I would like to think that my research would be responsible for a positive change in somebody’s life.”

He continued: ‘When you consider how many people hate their job, I’m lucky to like mine so much.’

But was this really luck? Séamus O’Shaughnessy did not go into science by chance. “I have always been interested in science. From an early age I was interested in subjects such as astronomy and physics. I’ve always enjoyed mathematics, but mostly I like the discovery aspect of science — everything can be questioned or improved or redesigned,” he said. “ Science is pretty much essential to everything...” he added.

Following his taste for design and improvement, Séamus studied engineering in Trinity College Dublin.

Like all engineering students, for the first two years of the course he studied aspects of civil, electronic, mechanical and computer engineering. “But of all the branches of engineering on offer in Trinity, mechanical engineering appealed to me most,” he reckoned.

And in my opinion, it also offers the widest range of career paths.” So mechanical engineering was his choice for the final two years, before starting a PhD in the field of heat transfer and fluids.

Séamus’ idea of doing a PhD was to work on his own project. But as he put it, “I was conscious that a PhD can constrain or pigeonhole a researcher to a specific field,” he said. After four years, he aspired to work on something new. As it happens, his PhD supervisor Dr. Tony Robinson was also working on something new; what’s more, it was right up Séamus’ street, the area of heat transfer. As Séamus’ PhD was nearing completion, ‘the eternal stove‘ project was still in its infancy.

The idea of electrification from biomass burning stoves came from a trip that Tony led to Malawi. “An earlier project of ours looked at how we could generate electrical energy from the heat of the sun to power a small light for studying or socializing at night in rural Africa,” explained Tony. “We could not engineer this device to make it affordable for our target market,” he continued”, “but the trip gave us high insight as to how real people in the field might use a stove generator.” After they returned to

Dublin, Irish Aid realised that a device like this could play an important role in reducing some of the negative impacts of cooking. “The stove burns more cleanly, producing significantly less particles, which has a big impact on health. It could reduce indoor air pollution caused by unvented stoves associated with diseases such as bronchitis, or lung cancer”, Tony said.

Irish Aid asked them to develop and produce some demonstration devices for evaluation.

But designing such a device means having to tackle many different tasks: 1 — heat exchanger design ( for both heat capture and removal) 2 — computational modelling of the heat exchangers, 3 —experimental investigation of the effect of device integration with the stove up 4 — Lab validation, and manufacture of a prototype.

Séamus described what all these tasks mean on a day to day basis: “Mostly our work concerns stove characterisation and heat exchanger modeling.” This part would be done on computers, but they also conduct experiments where they actually burn wood to investigate the thermoelectric generators themselves. “In a typical wood-burning experiment we perform a water boil test. This allows us to measure how efficient a particular stove design is in boiling water, and thus ‘rank’ various stove designs,” Séamus explained. “We have also conducted some emissions testing to calculate the amount of certain types of pollutants produced during the burn,” he continued. “Ultimately, we need to discover the best place within a stove to fit our device, and whether this has any undesired impact on the usability of the stove in general.” Of course they don’t want their device to increase the time it takes to cook nzema , the local food staple.

Séamus is glad that this project involves the design and development of a product. “Essentially it’s R&D, and that’s where I see my career heading,” he said ” I was given a lot of freedom in my research project to investigate the aspects that interested me, and I really enjoyed it.”

This doesn’t mean he loves everything he is doing. Conducting experiments of course is not always a piece of cake. “I don’t like how a stove-

burning experiment means I stink of smoke for the rest of the day!”. But he reckoned there are other practical aspects that are much more enjoyable: “During my PhD I had the opportunity of travelling to conferences worldwide and present my work to audiences of my peers. It was wonderful experience and I got to see so many amazing places and meet a variety of people from all types of backgrounds and cultures.” The Eternal Stove should give him the opportunity for more travel. Soon the device will be presented to the US governement, as part of a global project, called the ‘Global Alliance for Clean Cookstove’.”

This is a UN sponsored programme to deploy up to 100 million price subsidised stoves in the developing world in order to reduce pollution, deforestation and increase health and nutritional diversity,” said Wayne O’Connell , the Project Manager. “The Irish Government (through Irish Aid) are playing a leading role and the School of Engineering in Trinity College is proud to be technically supporting this effort,” he pointed out.

Then once fully ready ( in three to four months), the prototype will be shipped to Malawi where a three month study will be undertaken to measure both its techncological and societal impact. As Wayne put it, “it is all well and good if we design a stove that works very efficiently in a lab, but what is important to the users is how the device performs in their and home improves their cooking experience.”

As for Séamus, he’d like to continue in R&D; “obviously working for a well-established company would be great. Long term I’d like to start my own consultancy company once I’ve got some more experience.” He has one regret though. “Not a regret as such, but I think that to further my career I’ll have to leave Ireland in the next couple of years as the opportunities here for quality R&D are so limited.” He’s probably like so many others, who feel that travelling is fun and stimulating but need to know they have a home to come back to and settle down.

Hopefully one day he will.

SCIENCE SPIN Issue 44 CHOOSING SCIENCE

Institute of Technology Carlow At the Institute of Technology Carlow (ITC), every effort has been made to combine a stress-free location with top-level tuition and facilities that are state of the art in a number of key disciplines. Located less than an hour from Dublin and serving a catchment area of 700,000 people, ITC had the third highest number of CAO applications of any Institute of Technology in the country this year. The Institute has a student population of approximately 5,000 with a diverse portfolio of taught programmes in science, engineering and business.

Department of Science and Health

The Department of Science and Health (DSH) at ITC is a dynamic, focused and innovative Department providing a flexible suite of courses from levels 6-10.

The Department is characterised by its niche areas of expertise, student support and practical career focussed programmes. Lectures are supported by practical classes with group tuition giving students unparalleled access to academic staff, all of whom are active in research or curriculum development.

Graduates from all of our programmes have the opportunity to continue their studies at postgraduate level. The Department is delighted to accept applications from school leavers, mature students, and part time applicants.

Biological, Biopharmaceutical, Forensic and Analytical Science DSH has been providing science programmes for almost 40 years and our graduates are working around the world as biotechnology, pharmaceutical, environmental, educational, analytical, and managerial professionals. The Department focuses on its’ strengths in biology and chemistry based streams and all programmes have an applied, practical, career orientated core. At level 8, we provide honours degrees in Environmental Science (CW168) and Biosciences with Bioforensics or Biopharmaceuticals (CW108). We also have level 6 and 7 awards in Analytical and Forensic Science (CW107), Biosciences (CW117), Pharmacy Technician Studies (CW116), Applied Biology or Applied Chemistry (CW126). All of our final year degree students undertake a commercially orientated research project and develop skills in project planning, team and individual research work, presentation skills and work place planning to prepare graduates for employment. In addition, final year students will also take part in a work placement module where they have the opportunity to apply their skills a real life context.

Sport, Exercise, Athletic Therapy and Rehabilitation

ITC has a long history of Health studies which began with the launch of its Higher Certificate in Physiology and Health Science (CW106) over twenty years ago. This programme remains one of the most popular level 6 courses in the country, providing a unique opportunity to study for a career in the applied health sciences. The vast majority of graduates go on to further study in physiotherapy, occupational therapy, sports rehabilitation, osteopathy, radiography, nutrition and dietetics.

With growing participation in competitive and recreational sport the college launched its honours degree in Sport Rehabilitation and Athletic Therapy (CW188) in 2000, training graduates to become competent in supporting the

medical and para-medical professions in the rehabilitation of the injured athlete. Students benefit from a work placement, individual research project, and working in a real life on campus sports rehabilitation clinic. Graduates of the programme are eligible for membership of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), Athletic Rehabilitation Therapy of Ireland (ARTI) and the British Association of Sports Rehabilitators and Trainers (BASRaT).

In 2008 the college launched a suite of degree programmes in Sport & Exercise – GAA, Rugby and Soccer (CW807, CW907, CW927) in association with Comhairle Laighean and the GAA, Leinster Rugby, the Irish Rugby Football Union and the Football Association of Ireland. These programmes combine coaching, fitness, player development and club administration with a broad based academic business or communications curriculum relevant to the development of the sport. Graduates are eligible to progress to the honours degree courses in Business or Communications and Public Relations at IT Carlow and will work in sports related business or public relations environments, games development, sports management; club development; personal coaching or fitness.

An honours degree in Sports Science (CW178), which is the study of physiological, biomechanical and psychological influences on performance in sport and exercise is now available at DSH and it welcomed its first class of students in September 2010. Students study the application of scientific principles and techniques with the aim of improving sporting performance and the programme is suited to students with a genuine interest in the science of sport.

Postgraduate research at the Department of Science and Health

The Department of Science and Health also has an international record of MSc and PhD research and development in a range of areas including biotechnology, molecular ecology, environmental science, Mens’ health and rehabilitative sciences. Research scientists are examining different aspects of Mens’ health in Ireland to develop innovative and multi-disciplinary research and training programmes and the critical evaluation of the therapeutic practices and procedures employed by therapists in clinical practice. They also focus on cutting edge environmental research for pollution control, biofuel production and biomolecular monitoring and these active research groups ensure that undergraduate students are exposed to the most recent developments in science.

Institiúid Teicneolaíochta Cheatharlach

INSTITUTE of TECHNOLOGY

CARLOW

At the Heart of South Leinster

www.itcarlow.ie LIVE LINK

Renewable energy, nanotechnology, space technology, computer animation and game development: A career for you?

MyScienceCareer.ie is a new website which aims to provide resources for students, career guidance counsellors, teachers, parents and people of all ages who are interested in finding out more about a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Check out career profiles written by young professionals from all areas of science, along with useful resources such as video interviews, for some valuable insights into a career in science.

Find out the difference between various sciencerelated jobs, what subjects you would need to study, what a typical day involves and what other areas could be open to you in the future by pursuing a career in STEM. Use the Resources section to direct you to some important websites that will help you to get more information on what colleges to consider, what points you may need and what options are open to you. Read about Ireland’s rich scientific history and famous Irish scientists of the past, as well as finding out more about our brightest Science Ambassadors of today.

www.MyScienceCareer.ie

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is an initiative of the national integrated awareness programme Discover Science & Engineering.