Explore UCD

UCD Home >
Springboard Places 2024
overlay image

Impact Showcase

Research and innovation in UCD College of Engineering and Architecture deliver important impact – advancing knowledge, supporting enterprise, informing policy, and underpinning the nature and quality of the education we deliver to our students. We recognise that this impact can take many different forms, over different time scales.  The following examples capture and convey samples of the national and global impacts of the research, scholarship and innovation undertaken in the College.

Professor Eoin Casey
Energy-saving UCD technology breathes life into wastewater treatment

Research at UCD has developed new technology to save up energy in wastewater treatment. Conventionally, bubbles of oxygen are forced through wastewater to support bacteria that remove nutrients and contaminants, but this wastes energy.
Dr Nan Zhang
Towards Mass Production for Precision Micro/Nano Devices

Many industries require precision components. Manufacturing these components can involve engineering materials and features at tiny scales, on the order of microns or even nanometres (billionths of metres).

Dr Nan Zhang at UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering aims to help bring innovations in precision manufacturing from the lab-based prototypes to the large volume of manufacturing that industry needs.
Professor Lizbeth Goodman
Technology for all: towards truly inclusive design

How can we make sure that technology is designed to suit all the people who might use it? And how can we build technology that helps users with specific needs, such as People With Disabilities, People With Autism Spectrum Disorder, people with medical conditions such as Obesity, or Alzheimer’s Disease and, more generally, marginalised groups in society?
Dr Eoin O’Cearbhaill
3D printing to revolutionise medical devices

3D printing technology is breaking down traditional barriers for manufacturing objects. It turns a design into an object by ‘printing’ layers of materials, building up three-dimensional shapes. At UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Dr Eoin O’Cearbhaill and his team at the UCD Medical Device Design Group are developing new and innovative ways to make cost-effective, efficient and often highly personalised objects to help us to monitor health, deliver life-saving medicines and to

Professor Paula Bourke
New Approaches to Plasma Therapy may Improve Medical Implant Outcomes

The race is on to find new and effective ways of treating antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, which represent a major threat to the health of patients undergoing surgery for medical implants. Bacterial infection is one of the most common problems associated with such surgery, compounded by the absence of new antibiotics to take up the battle. But a tripartite team involving researchers at UCD, QUB and Jefferson University in Philadelphia are pioneering new approaches.

Dr Fiachra O Loughlin
New Perspectives on River Models

Rivers are arteries for human civilisation, and can enable prosperity or, in the case of flooding or drought, they can bring the potential for devastation. Dr Fiachra O’Loughlin from UCD School of Civil Engineering is using freely available satellite data to better model and understand large river systems.
Dr Kevin Nolan
Helping People Understand and Mitigate the Spread of Aerosol-Born Infections

A request in April 2020 to deploy a long-established optical technique to identify gas flows and the spread of aerosols in surgery opened up an entirely new avenue of research for Dr Kevin Nolan, whose primary interest is in studying the flow of liquids and gases – fluid dynamics. Initially, the new research focused on identifying the potential spread of the COVID-19 virus in clinical procedures and therapy settings.

Dr Eoin O’Neill
Assessing Flood Risk Awareness Contributes to Environmental Policy Formation

Due to climate change, there has been an increase in the frequency of exceptionally heavy rainfall leading to flooding. This poses problems for people living or working near water courses, and it can also increase the risk of poorly performing Domestic Waste Water Treatment Systems (DWWTS) and the risk of contamination of well water for people living in rural areas.

UCD College of Engineering and Architecture

Room 122 & Room 126, UCD Engineering and Materials Science Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
T: +353 1 716 1868 | E: eng.arch@ucd.ie | collegeea@ucd.ie | engarch.research@ucd.ie | Location Map(opens in a new window)

All Student Emails should be submitted using our Engineering and Architecture Office Student Connector. This will ensure the fastest and most efficient reply to your email.