The Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics & Science supported the following visits, all of which are scheduled to take place in 2016
Dr Catherine Rose, School of Natural Sciences
Prof. David Beerling. Prof. Beerling one of the world's leading botanists widely respected internationally for his major contributions to understanding the co-evolution of plants and the environment over the past half billion years. He is distinguished for pioneering cross-disciplinary research programmes that combine paleobotanical, experimental and theoretical modelling approaches. His research demonstrates how experimental and fossil evidence can be blended to enhance our understanding of plant evolution and its feedbacks on past environments. His integration of ecosystem processes into a broad geosciences framework established the importance of the terrestrial biosphere in Earth's climate history.
Professor Brian Espey, School of Physics
Dr. Jonathan Bennie, Associate Research Fellow, Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter. Dr. Bennie has a background in Ecology and is currently working on the ecological effects of night-time light, in particular how species interact with their environment, and the consequences of this for whole ecosystems. He was the lead author of an important paper which examined historical trends in the growth of light at night across Europe, published in Nature’s Scientific Reports (Sci. Reports, Vol. 4, No. 3789: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep03789). The visit is envisaged in late winter/early spring.
Professor Brendan Tangney, School of Computer Science & Statistics
Dr. Jason Klugman, Dr Jason Klugman, Director – Princeton University Preparatory Programme, Lecturer and Program Associate, Princeton University Program in Teacher Preparation, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Dr. Klugman earned his doctorate in Education, Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education It is proposed that Dr Klugman attend on a one week study visit (3-10 April 2016) to explore and contribute to the activities of Trinity Access 21 , Bridge21), CRITE and the Trinity Access Programmes , to explore how these programmes might align with teacher preparation, access and research activities in Princeton University. This proposed visit focuses on exploring potential collaboration between the Trinity Access 21 project
and Princeton University, regarding research and practice associated with educational access, teacher preparation and pedagogical innovation through use of technology.
Professor Jan Manscot, School of Mathematics
Professor Boris Pioline from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and CERN in Geneva. Professor Pioline is a leading scientist in the field of theoretical high energy physics. He is in particular known for his work on string theory and number theoretic aspects of string theory. During the visit, we aim to make decisive progress on our joint research. The visit will in particular be very useful for completing an ongoing project on the symmetries of string theory, to be published in a journal on high energy theory. Furthermore, we intend to make initial ideas on the enumeration of quantum states into new and concrete projects.
Professor Kevin Kelly, School of Engineering
Prof. Eduardo de Senzi Zancul is a Professor at the Polytechnic School (POLI) at the University of São Paulo (USP), working in the Department of Production Engineering. He is Vice-coordinator of InovaLab@POLI – a laboratory complex focused on engineering led design innovation, and is vice-coordinator of the Production Engineering undergraduate degree programme at POLI-USP. His research areas include innovation and competitiveness, management of product development, product lifecycle management (PLM), design thinking, advanced manufacturing, additive manufacturing and engineering education. Prof. Zancul will spend one month in Ireland in summer 2016. Specific objectives of this visit are; detailed investigation of TCD's innovation and entrepreneurship strategy; guest lectures, provisionally titled "Innovation and market opportunities for Irish industry in Brazil", "Product Lifecycle Management and its importance for industry", and "Mass customization based on additive manufacturing"; further harmonization of existing joint innovation education activities in the SUGAR framework; examination of possibilities for increased student mobility, at both undergraduate and post-graduate level, between USP and TCD and collaboration with Kevin Kelly on two joint publication in the areas of engineering education and innovation, based on data generated and collected during their ongoing SUGAR project.
Professor Adrian Bracken, School of Genetics & Microbiology
Dr. Je H. Lee. Dr. Lee has developed a new method to look at gene expression in single cells in live organisms. This breakthrough research was published in the journal Science in 2014. Since publishing this work, he has established his lab at Cold Spring Harbor and is actively seeking international collaborators to utilise this technology and new methods he is pioneering. When we met, we shared many common interests and would like to have more time to discuss potential collaborations.I believe Dr. Lee would give a wonderful and inspiring seminar of broad interest to both biological and more technology based researchers at Trinity College.
Professor Rachel Evans, School of Chemistry
Dr Sébastien Clément, Assistant Professor, Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier, Université de Montpellier 2, France. This grant will provide the opportunity for detailed discussion to identify and develop a mutual research topic that will form the basis of a future application to a Horizon 2020 programme. We have tentatively identified the Marie Cure ETN call in January 2017 as a possible target and propose that the visit will take place in the first 6 months of 2016 to provide sufficient time to recruit further consortium members. During the visit, we will also hold discussions with our Research Programme Officer, Dr Claire McKenna to determine if there are other suitable calls to apply to. During his visit, Dr Clément will also engage with the PhD and postdoctoral researchers in my group and will deliver a School seminar to facilitate networking with other members of the School and the wider Faculty.
Professor Stefan Hutzler, School of Physics
Dr. Andrew Kraynik. Dr. Kraynik is a renowned expert in the area of computer simulation of foam structure and rheology using the free software Surface Evolver [1-6]. Now retired from Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, and living in the US he will spend the summer of 2016 as a Visiting Research Professor in Paris. Since January 2011 he has lectured and collaborated on foam research and taught at over twenty universities in Europe and the US. Dr. Kraynik will join my research group Foams and Complex Systems for two weeks, most likely in early autumn 2016. My group has been engaged in simulations of foams for over two decades. Dr. Kraynik would also deliver a series of lectures on "the statistics of random cellular structures", of interest also to members of the School of Mathematics, conduct a workshop on performing Surface Evolver computations and share computer software used to simulate random foams in two and three dimensions.
Professor Mary Bourke, School of Natural Sciences
Dr. Patrick Belmont. Dr. Belmont is an Associate Professor of Hydrology and Geomorphology in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, USA. He is planning a full year sabbatical visit (summer 2016 to summer 2017) to Ireland and will be working closely with Dr. Bourke, Department of Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Belmont brings a unique skillset and research background spanning hydrologic and geomorphic modelling, sediment transport modelling and analysis of high resolution topography data. Dr. Belmont visited Dublin in November 2015 to participate in the Irish Geomorphology Scientific Workshop, led by TCD, and has begun to develop a network of collaborators within our research community.
Professor Eileen Drew, School of Computer Science & Statistics
Dr. Catherine Vidal. Catherine Vidal holds a doctorate in neurophysiology (Paris 6, 1986). From 1997 to 2014, she has been the Research Director at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. DR. Vidal is also particularly active in the popularization of science, especially concerning determinism in biology and against what it calls "neurosexisme" the brain plasticity and the relationship between society and science (including the construction of genres). A number of her works and interventions are reminiscent of the work of researchers in neurobiology that suggest that the observable differences between men and women are the products of a gendered social construct, not biological determinism. She actively promotes equal opportunities between women and men in education, working life and civilian life. Vidal is a member of the scientific council of the Mission for the Place of Women in the CNRS, and the scientific committees and/or boards of the Émilie du Châtelet Institute, Laboratory of Equality, and the Association Women & Sciences. She was promoted Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 2009.
Professor Stefan Sint, School of Mathematics
Professor Maria Garcia-Perez. Prof. Garcia-Perez is an expert on the non-perturbative treatment of Quantum Field Theories, and has worked on a variety of physics problems, ranging from QCD at finite temperature over studies of inflationary cosmology to the QCD vacuum structure and topology. Her expertise nicely complements the one of staff members at the school of mathematics working on related topics. Prof. Garcia-Perez is the author or co-author of 71 scientific publications, four of which have collected over 100 citations each. Prior to her appointment at the Autonomous University of Madrid she has held positions at the universities of Heidelberg (Germany) and Leiden (Netherlands) and at CERN (Switzerland). She has served as the deputy director of her current institution, the Instituto de Fisica Teorica (IFT), which is one of the few awarded a status of recognized excellence by the Spanish
government.
Aonghus MacNabola, School of Engineering
Dr. Richard Baldauf, adjunct professor in the School of Engineering at North Carolina State University (U.S.) and permanent Senior Researcher at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at a workshop on the passive control of air pollution in the urban environment to be held at TCD in August. Dr. Baldauf will co-lead this Workshop examining the potential of Urban Vegetation to improve Air Quality, consisting of planning, organizing, presenting, and co-leading discussion groups during the meeting. He will also participate in the development of educational materials and curriculum as an output of the workshop. The anticipated duration of his stay would be approximately three weeks for all of these activities.
Professor Sylvia Draper, School of Chemistry
Dr Shi-Xia Liu (Humboldt fellow 1998-2000, Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc. Lanzhou University), is an outstanding senior researcher in the University of Bern. She transitioned from a post-doctoral researcher under the mentorship of Prof Silvio Decurtins to an independent career. Her research track-record is exemplary. She has co-authored over 140 papers (including Nature Communications, Journal of American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie), many as corresponding author and with an impressive range of eminent scientists in her field (e.g. 2015 RSC Advances article with Michael Grätzel).