The Marine Institute hosted its first Post-Doctoral Fellowship Symposium on Tuesday 25 October where the fellows or their supervisors presented the progress and current research findings of their projects.
These cover a wide range of topics, from the effects of climate change on fish stocks to the monitoring of seabirds around offshore wind installations using unmanned drones.
Marine Institute chief executive Dr Paul Connolly said: “It is great to see the breadth of research being carried out under these fellowships which will provide data and scientific evidence to inform policy and decision making on the many current global challenges including climate change mitigation, food security and marine pollution.
“We have excellent researchers using the latest technologies to observe and monitor Irish waters, investigating solutions that will achieve a sustainable low-carbon marine sector for aquaculture, fisheries, renewable ocean energy, and tourism in Ireland. The fellows’ research will also add value to the historic climate, environmental and fisheries datasets held by the Institute.”
The aim of the Post-Doctoral Fellowships Programme is to build capacity by supporting post-doctoral research positions in defined areas of strategic priority for up to four years in duration.
Researchers funded are encouraged to become self-sustaining by successfully leveraging funds under national funding initiatives and the EU Horizon Europe Programme, as well as building further capacity through the development of research teams.
The retention of the Irish researchers carrying out high-quality marine science is of national importance, the Marine Institute says — for both Ireland’s economy and society, including researchers who have received a higher degree (MSc and PhD) under the institute’s Cullen Scholarship Programme.
A total of 17 fellowships with total grant-aid of €6.4 million has been awarded for research under the Post-Doctoral Fellowships Programme from 2019 to 2022, as detailed in the table below:
|
Project Title |
Presenter |
Higher Education Institute |
|
Modelling Ireland’s Maritime Transport Industry (MIMTI) |
Dr Daniel Cassidy |
University of Galway |
|
Expanding the Deep Field Capabilities of Marine Monitoring Platforms |
Dr Aoife Hegarty |
Atlantic Technological University (Sligo) |
|
Increasing coastal resilience using terrestrial and ocean-based nature-based solutions |
*Dr Eugene Farrell |
University of Galway |
|
Climate Change Fish Stock Impacts |
Dr Louise Vaughan |
Atlantic Technological University (Galway) |
|
Novel Mapping of the Shallow Water INFOMAR Data Set: Towards Ireland’s first Shallow Water Atlas (NOMANS_TIF) |
Dr Riccardo Arosio |
University College Cork |
|
Monitoring the presence, abundance and fate of microplastics and their associated chemicals in an Irish deep water SAC’s (MoP_up) |
Dr Alicia Mateos Cárdenas |
University College Cork |
|
Use of Recyclable Materials in Sustainable Marine Turbines |
Dr Yadong Jiang |
University of Galway |
|
Irish marine screening and assessment of emerging contaminants in coastal and transitional environments (I-SECURE) |
*Prof Fiona Regan |
Dublin City University |
|
Accelerated Seaweed Production for an Innovative and Robust Seaweed Aquaculture in Ireland (ASPIRE) |
*Dr Ronan Sulpice |
University of Galway |
|
Usage of Irish Seas and Coastal Ecosystems for Tourism Development (UISCE Tourism) |
Dr John Deely |
University of Galway |
|
Waves of Change (WoC): promoting sustainable development and behavioural change through ocean literacy |
*Dr Róisín Nash |
Atlantic Technological University (Galway) |
|
AI-based Bird Monitoring using Long Range Unmanned Aerial Drone (AI-Bird) for Offshore RE Installations |
*Dr Gerard Dooly |
University of Limerick |
|
Shark Island: enhancing sustainable shark ecotourism in Ireland |
Dr Luke Cameron |
Trinity College Dublin |
|
Progressing Marine Biodiscovery in Ireland ( |
Dr Laurence Jennings |
University of Galway |
|
ACCAI: Decoding Arctic Climate Change: From Archive to Insight |
Dr Elwyn de la Vega |
University of Galway |
|
Improvement of MI operational modelling system and observation network of Irish marine waters using state-of-the-art model with data assimilation, model parametrization and machine learning techniques |
Dr Alexander Shchepetkin |
University of Galway |
|
Sustainable Aquaculture: advancing Irish Bivalve Biomass Production by Promoting Seed Abundance and more Disease resilient Stocks (SusAqua) |
Dr Sharon Lynch |
University College Cork |
*Presentation by Supervisor.
These projects are supported by the Marine Institute and funded under the Marine Research Programme by the Government of Ireland.
