PhD Projects and Descriptions
The Project
SUMMIT: Sustainable Mobility Models for a Just Transition
You can download SUMMIT’s PhD project proposal descriptions by clicking on the button below.
The Team
Lead PI: Vinny Cahill (Computer Science & Statistics)
Co-PIs: Mélanie Bouroche (SCSS); Sarah Browne (Business); Brian Caulfield (Engineering); Siobhán Clarke (SCSS); Owen Conlan (SCSS); Sam Cromie (Psychology); Anna Davies (SNS); Ivana Dusparic (SCSS); Ronan Lyons (Economics); Cian O’Callaghan (SNS); Martin Sokol (SNS)
The Challenge
Mobility is the lifeblood of human connectedness and economic progress but is a major societal and environmental problem. The SUMMIT project is fundamentally rethinking models of mobility with a view to achieving ‘universal and equitable access to a sustainable transportation system’.
We will use a variety of perspectives (from computer science, engineering, geography, business, economics, geography, psychology) to explore models that demonstrate how we can create a transport system that makes optimal use ofresources and infrastructure while offering efficiency, comfort, and convenience.
SUMMIT will seek solutions that address five pervasive concerns which make this a wicked problem at the scale that E3 is intended to address - slowing climate change, ensuring equality of access to mobility, supporting a just transition to new models, enhancing communities, and supporting economic development.
The Project
Digitising biodiversity:
Landscape-Animal-Digital-Human Translations
You can download Digitising Biodiversity PhD project proposal descriptions by clicking on the button below.
The Team
Lead PI: Ian Donohue (Natural Sciences)
Co-PIs: Anil Kokoram (Engineering); Michael Cronin (Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies); Caroline Brophy (Computer Science & Statistics); Yvonne Buckley (Natural Sciences); Nicola Marchetti (Engineering); Jane Stout (Natural Sciences)
The Challenge
Ecosystems are complex and interconnected. We cannot act responsibly to protect or support them if we don’t have the data to understand them.
Obtaining reliable biodiversity data on the ground is expensive. It tends to be done at coarse spatial and temporal resolutions. This hinders our understanding and capacity to predict the impact of human disturbances.
This proposal aims to develop a smart environmental monitoring system that will bring about a revolution in biodiversity quantification in real time. We will develop and integrate acoustic, visual and mm-wave all-weather radar sensors, with processing and interpretation using AI species-recognition and functional diversity tools. In the course of this work we will address the connected challenge of addressing explicitly what is lost and gained through digital translation from animal observation to human understanding.
The Project
FOREST: Reimagining relations with nature
You can download Forest's PhD project proposal descriptions by clicking on the button below.
The Team
Lead PI: Jane Stout (Natural Sciences)
Co-PIs: Susan Murphy (Natural Sciences); Eleanor Denny (Economics); Caroline Brophy (Computer Science & Statistics); Martha O’Hagan-Luff (Business); Sarah McCormack (Engineering)The Challenge
Tree planting is perceived as a possible action to address climate and biodiversity challenges, however, its ecological, social, and financial risks are not always fully considered.
Forests are rapidly emerging as an important dimension of the government climate action plan to attain net zero carbon status by 2050 but tackling climate change is not all about carbon - nature must be part of the conversation.
This project will explore the social-cultural-economic-financial, technical and ecological implications of extending Ireland’s forests networks with native species, from a multi-disciplinary lens. It will consider aspects such as technology vs nature-based solutions, carbon off-setting, community engagement, rewilding, and site-specific afforestation issues.
Visit the website of FORESTThe Project
Diffuse Water Pollution: NUtrient capture REcovery and reCycling systems (NuReCycle)
You can download NuReCycle's PhD project proposal descriptions by clicking on the button below.
The Team
Lead PI: David O'Connell (Engineering)
Co-PIs: Katja Bruisch (Environmental History); Laurence Gill (Engineering); Marta Martins (Microbiology); Carla Harper (SNS); Daniel Trimble (Engineering)The Challenge
All over the world agricultural water pollution from surface and sub-surface run-off is a problem. In Ireland alone, over the period of 2013-2018, almost half of the monitored river water bodies were at moderate (28%), poor (19%) or bad (<1%) ecological status. The primary pressures on these monitored river bodies arise from siltation and excess nutrients, involving phosphorus and nitrogen.
The NuReCycle project will explore scientific, biological and engineering interventions to reduce agricultural run-off and protect the water quality of associated aquatic ecosystems. It will go further, to demonstrate how run-off can be controlled and even exploited through nutrient control (using microbial investigations/vegetation as accumulator species), nutrient recovery (using passive in-stream sediment traps) and recycling (fertilizer/biochar) concepts.