Earth & Ocean Science

September 2011

Dr.Garret Duffy recently secured funding from the NUIG-UL Seed Fund to upgrade the capability of the Marine Robotics Research Centre in UL (of which he is a member) to enable high-resolution multibeam surveys to be done from a surface vessel.  Graduate students and researchers in Earth and Ocean Sciences will now have access to this marine mapping technology, the 400kHz Reson 7125 ( http://www.reson.com/products/seabat/), for their research projects.

Post-graduate Hollydawn won for Best Platform Presentation at the recent SETAC Focused Topic Meeting, Pollutants in the Environment: Fate and Toxicity. The conference was held in Merida, Mexico. Her travel supported by Thomas Crawford Hayes Award.

Aisling Smith, a PhD candidate in oceanography, was awarded one of twelve funded places onboard the RV Salme training cruise this past July, as part of the EUROFLEETS project.  The cruise will operated out of the Marine Systems Institute at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.  The training course focused on developing the advanced practical skills in oceanography necessary to design and conduct multidisciplinary marine research.  The study area for the cruise was the stratified brackish water estuary, the Gulf of Finland.

August 2011

Two new PhD positions are now available within EOS, please visit the following site for more information and links: http://www.nuigalway.ie/eos/researchopportunities.html

February 2011

Siddhi Joshi, a PhD student in EOS, was awarded Best Poster at the 54^th Irish Geological Research Meeting held in February 2011 at NUI Galway.  Her poster, entitiled "Coupled hydrodynamic-sediment transport modelling and habitat modelling in Galway Bay, West of Ireland".  She is supervised by Garret Duffy, Colin Brown & Anthony Grehan. ( Download PDF [9 MB])

Fiona Stapleton, a 4^th undergraduate student, was given an honourable mention at the same conference for her poster entitled, "Dual-Frequency Sediment Classification in Galway Bay".  Her supervisor for the project was Garret Duffy.  ( Download PDF [1.4 MB]). 

EOS graduate Caroline Martin was one of the six NUI Galway winners of the inaugural Undergraduate Awards of Ireland, presented recently by President Mary McAleese. The Irish Times report that some 41 students from seven third-level colleges collected the awards, set up to recognise the best undergraduate project work throughout the island. The winners were selected through an academic review process by 33 separate panels made up of academics and industry professionals. More than 1,600 submissions were received in total across disciplines as diverse as chemistry, economics, linguistics, medicine, natural science, business and engineering. The winners each received a gold medal and their winning essays will be published in an annual journal.

Caroline’s winning project is based on an essay she completed for EOS412 Environments & the History of Life. Since graduating with a first class degree in 2008 Caroline has completed research work at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute and Columbia University in New York and field work in Taiwan as part of her PhD at Cambridge.

Interest in the EOS degree programme increased again this year with 33 first year students registering for the denominated BSc degree. Fifteen students graduated this year with a BSc in Earth & Ocean Sciences. Of that number 4 graduated with first class honours.

Maria Judge (EOS graduate 2007) has recently been involved in the discovery of the deepest black smokers in the world, located in the Caribbean.  These are located in water depths in excess of 4500 metres and emit high temperature mineralized fluids heated by submarine igneous activity, see image.