Research

In a corner of University College Dublin’s suburban campus, archaeologists are building houses using thousand-year-old methods and casting bronze tools in fire pits using moulds they’ve made themselves. Brendan O’Neill, a PhD student in UCD’s School of Archaeology, has built a wooden roundhouse as part of his research. It took him about thirty days’ work over the course of ten months to complete. He wove hazel rods from a managed forest in the Irish midlands to create walls and a roof, which is topped with heather to help waterproof the structure. Inside the house, there’s a surprising amount of space. A central fireplace surrounded by s

Imagine if Dublin had an instrument panel: a set of gauges and graphs that revealed to its residents the precise current state of their home town. Professor Rob Kitchin and his team at Maynooth did exactly that. And they built it, online. It’s called Dublin Dashboard. Dublin.ie: What’s on Dashboard right now that the ordinary person might be interested in? Robin Kitchen (RK): Probably the real time page where you can see how many spaces there are in the car parks or what the sound levels are or what the pollution levels are or how many bikes are in the bike stand, that kind of thing. The city is increas

Irish folklore is all just leprechauns, legends and fireside stories, right? Well, not quite. If you go down to UCD today, you’ll actually find a very different story. The National Folklore Collection Back in the 1920s, Irish folklore collectors began to scramble around the country on a mission to record Ireland’s dying heritage and traditions. And that’s how the National Folklore Collection at UCD originated. Since then, it has grown into one of the biggest and most impressive collections of folklore and oral traditions anywhere in the world. It is the history that we don’t learn in school. The collection itsel

What’s going on at Dublin’s water research centre At Dublin City University, researchers are stepping up. Professor of chemistry, Fiona Regan, is the founder and director of the Water Institute which, in 2015, brought together researchers from across a range of disciplines to carry out research into national and global water problems. Why the world needs DCU’s Water Institute The devastating conflict in Syria was sparked by a water scarcity that pushed people into the cities and provoked unrest. The unrest in Yemen is rooted in a water crisis. Large parts of America and

What’s being discovered at Dublin’s third-levels? Postgraduate degrees are increasingly useful for people who want to stand out in the jobs market. Much of the focus here has tended to be on taught masters programmes, but the skills picked up during a masters by research or a doctoral (PhD) programme are invaluable: you will learn about how to research and evaluate information and then effectively communicate what you have learned. We spoke to four students about their research projects and what’s next for them. Lisa Koep, PhD candidate at the school of marketing in

It’s an economic truth, universally acknowledged, that innovation is at the core of most successful businesses. Being innovative, however, is easier said than done. That’s why incubation centres are so necessary. Ireland proudly boasts nine university incubation centres, six university bio incubation centres and 15 Institute of Technology incubation centres. And they all contribute to making Dublin one of the world’s most exciting locations for both research and development – and in which to

If you’re not entirely sure what the Internet of Things (IoT) is, or if you haven’t even heard of it yet, that’s alright. Essentially, the IoT is a connection of devices to the internet, whether that’s your washing machine or your house alarm and everything will be ‘talking’ to the other. On a micro level, that might mean that your alarm clock will tell your coffee machine that it’s time to start brewing a pot when you get up; on a macro level the possibilities are infinite, including making cities smarter.

What CONNECT does has the potential to impact on all of us. As well as the intellectual and academic importance of the research done here, its practical application is just as relevant. According to CONNECT's Andrew O’Connell, there is a strong culture here of commercialising the research, taking it from the lab and turning it into a commercially viable product or service.