September2018 NUI Galway Graduates and Students Honoured at Civil Engineering Research Conference

Four NUI Galway graduates and students were recently recognised at the Civil Engineering Research in Ireland (CERI) Conference. The conference is organised by the Civil Engineering Research Association of Ireland (CERAI), and aims to nurture early-career researchers and offer opportunities wherever possible to the next generation of leaders in research and industry.

Two researchers and NUI Galway graduates were recognised at the conference for their outstanding contribution to research and practice at an early stage in their careers.

Dr Magdalena Hadjukiewicz, a postdoctoral researcher at NUI Galway, specialising in the use of computational fluid dynamics in building energy performance. Having successfully competed for and won seven significant research contracts amounting to some €13m over the last five years, including two substantial Horizon 2020 projects, she demonstrates an ability to work closely with industry, converting research into practice.

NUI Galway graduate Declan Gavigan lead a multi-disciplinary team of 12 engineers at Openhydro Ltd conducting research into tidal energy and collaborated with third level institutions in winning H2020 funding amounting to some €18m in the last three years and had a patent filed last year. 

During the conference awards were also presented for the best papers with a student as lead author in a number of streams of civil engineering. The NUI Galway award winners included Alan Carty for his paper on ‘An investigation into hydrodynamic effects on vortex drop structures liners using fluid-structure interaction techniques’; and Jennifer Kirkpatrick on ‘The Effect of Climate Change on Flooding in Cork City’.

Professor Peter McHugh, Dean of the College of Engineering and Informatics at NUI Galway, said: “It is fantastic to see young researchers who are alumni of NUI Galway being recognised in this way by the Civil Engineering research community in Ireland. The success of both Magdalena and Declan at attracting significant funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme is testament to the regard our peers in Europe have for the high quality research going on in NUI Galway and Ireland. Both have a very bright future, one which I have no doubt will have a very positive impact on our society in Ireland and beyond. I would also like to congratulate Alan Carty, a PhD candidate in Civil Engineering, and Jennifer Kirkpatrick, who recently completed a taught MSc in Water Resource Engineering, on winning best papers with a student as lead author. There were also papers presented at the conference whose lead authors were students who completed the work as part of their undergraduate degree in NUI Galway, which is reflective of the research lead teaching approach that we embed in our college.”

-Ends-