She will give a public lecture in Trinity College Dublin on 13 February at 8pm and will discuss the history and design of the technology used in space exploration as well as the challenges involved in managing this technology remotely.

Tickets are €7 (or €5 for members of Astronomy Ireland). Visit Astronomy Ireland for more information.

The week-long series of activities across the country is run by Engineers Ireland and is a campaign held annually to promote engineering as a career and the importance of the profession to Ireland.

Nearly 240 events will take place across the island of Ireland over the course of the week.

Highlight events over the week include an “ethical hackathon” highlighting security issues for third level technology students on Tuesday 28 February as well as the annual Volunteer Day on Thursday 1 March when engineers go into schools across Ireland to help explain the importance of maths to students.

For more details and to see a full list of events taking place during the week visit the Engineers Ireland website.

Robo Eireann's robots in action in Turkey

A  robot soccer team from NUI Maynooth has won a top award in the Robocup 2011 competition in Istanbul.

It’s not the only major success of an Irish student team in an international computing competition this month either. Their counterparts from IT Sligo also took the major honours in the Imagine Cup in New York earlier this month.

The Robo Eireann team from Maynooth were winners in the RoboCup’s “Open Challenge” category, for their research in the field of autonomous systems.

The team consisted of electronic engineering and computer science students and staff from the university.

Dr Seán McLoone, Head of the Department of Electronic Engineering at NUI Maynooth, said: “The RoboCup is an international research initiative aimed at advancing state-of-the-art intelligent autonomous robotics – and it’s an excellent environment for students to showcase their innovative research.”

Learn more

Find out more about Robo Eireann’s work with its humanoid robot soccer players, and visit the team’s Facebook page

Read about Ireland’s victory in the 2011 Imagine Cup

The 30 engineering, medical and biomedical engineering students are taking part in the third European Society for Engineering and Medicine Summer School at TCD.

The students have been learning how to work together in small groups to design new medical devices for specific medical and clinical problems. They have also been taking courses given by 15 leading professors of biomedical engineering and medicine.

An important sector

The medical devices sector is rapidly growing in Europe, with half a million people empoyed in over 11,000 medical technology companies. Science specialists work in a wide range of fields, from medicine to electronic and materials engineering.

Ireland is also a leading player in the sector, with the highest per capita number of medical technology personnel in Europe. Nine of the top 10 global companies how have a manufacturing base here.

“Current healthcare challenges, such as the ageing of Europe’s population as well as big killers such as cardiovascular disease, require multidisciplinary approaches for diagnosis and treatment,” says the summer school’s organiser, Professor Richard Reilly, Director of the Trinity Centre of Bioengineering at TCD.

An expert group recently identified a strong future demand  for jobs in Ireland’s medical devices industry – particularly for graduates with an understanding of design engineering, good management practices and quality assurance.

Learn more

Visit the websites of the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering and the European Society for Engineering and Medicine

Professor Carol O’Sullivan of Trinity College Dublin’s School of Computer Science and Statistics talked about the project recently in her inaugural lecture as the university’s Professor of Visual Computing, and she has been giving a sneak preview of what the virtual city will look like.

She explained how virtual technologies and complex equations are being used to create dynamic scenes in this simluated world, from simple colliding spheres to a complex populated city:

“We see virtual technologies in movies, video games, online communities and even in serious applications, such as health and education. Research in the field of visual computing has contributed greatly to increasing the realism of virtual objects, scenes and characters, by drawing on fundamental mathematical, scientific and technical principles to create stunning visual effects.”

Professor O’Sullivan’s own background is in mathematics – she studied for a BA in Mathematics at Trinity College, and worked as a software engineer in industry, mainly in Germany. Then she took a Masters degree at DCU and a PhD in computer graphics at TCD.

Read more about the Metropolis project

Gearóid Moroney's invention is front-page news on NUI Galway's website

A student at NUI Galway has won a major prize for his web-based system that allows a remote user to tune and play an electric guitar.

Gearóid Moroney has been awarded the Avaya Prize for the best final-year project in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at NUI Galway’s College of Engineering and Informatics.

Gearóid’s project was to create a device which attaches to a guitar, which can then tune it and play pre-programmed sequences of music on it.

It will be accessible on the internet through a web interface, allowing users to select specific functions to perform on the guitar (such as tuning). Users can also upload files which will be converted to play on the guitar.

Gearóid, who comes from Ennis, Co Clare, beat a number of other challengers whose projects included:

• A mobile phone application to allow older people to monitor and manage their nutritional intake and exercise levels
• An electronic circuit to increase the efficiency of generators, using energy wasted by basic cookers in households in developing countries to produce electricity

Dr Michael Keane, Senior Manager with Avaya in Galway, said: “We were greatly impressed by the standard of all the projects which we reviewed, but Gearóid’s project was particularly innovative.

“It involved the very challenging task of developing a number of different pieces of software and custom electronic hardware and then getting them all to work together to deliver a very novel and fun application.”

Learn more

Gearóid’s website explains the components he used for the project, including a microcontroller development board, a laptop, solenoids, mini servos, a USB microphone and a tuning motor.

View a video interview with Gearóid.

Malcolm O'Kelly playing against Italy in the Six Nations Championship

Ireland and Leinster rugby star Malcolm O’Kelly has been talking to school students about his passion for maths, and the importance of a solid grasp of maths in engineering careers. He visited schools as part of Engineers Week’s second national Volunteer Day.

Organised by Engineers Ireland, Volunteer Day involves hundreds of engineers around Ireland visiting schools to help students improve their understanding of the subject.

“This is the second year that I’ve been involved in Engineers Week and Engineers Ireland’s drive to improve maths understanding, but it’s still obvious to me that students need help to engage with it,” Malcolm says.  The rugby player has an engineering undergraduate degree, and a masters degree in mathematics from Trinity College Dublin.

“An engineering qualification has provided me with career options now that my rugby playing days are into their twilight. But maths is fundamental to engineering, so I’m glad to have had the opportunity to go back into school to help students get to grips with the everyday relevance of the subject.”

Technology jobs

John Power, Director General of Engineers Ireland, thanked the volunteer engineers for their contribution to the day, and he talked about the importance of maths within engineering.

“Last year we saw nearly 2,500 technology jobs announced, most of which were high-end engineering positions in the growth sectors of biomedical, energy and software engineering.  If Ireland wants to attract more foreign direct investment and produce jobs of this calibre, then our graduates need to have a high proficiency in maths,” he said.

Engineers Ireland conducted a survey to mark Volunteers Day, and found that 82% of students think studying Higher Level Maths would help their career – yet only 16% of students sat the Higher Level Maths paper in last year’s Leaving Cert exams.

Engineers Ireland says this big gap shows that much greater support is required to help students engage with maths.

Engineers Week runs until next Sunday, 20 February. To find out more information about events near you, visit EngineersWeek.ie.



Each year, the Fulbright Commission awards scholarships for Irish citizens to lecture, research or study in the United States and for US citizens to lecture, research or study in Ireland. These fully funded PhD scholarships for Irish STEM students to study in the US are worth approximately $60,000 per year.

The Fulbright International Science and Technology Award lasts between three to five years, and the process begins two years in advance for undergrads hoping to do a PhD in the US for 2012-2013.

Prestigious awards

These awards are the US Government’s most prestigious and valuable scholarship. There are 40 PhDs available to students around the world to study and research in the US.

Successful applicants must demonstrate the following in their application and at interview:

• Excellence in their academic track record
• A clearly defined course of study
• An understanding of Fulbright
• An application to a US institution
• Leadership potential and
• Irish/EU citizenship

Applicants must have completed a bachelor’s degree on or before August 2012 and cannot reside in the US at the time of application to the programme. It is also highly recommended that your bachelor’s degree is in the same or a related field for which you plan to pursue your postgraduate studies.

Learn more

Read more about the eligibility requirements

Find out how to apply – visit the Fulbright website, or email Sonya[dot]mcguinness[at]fulbright[dot]ie

Focus on the Future!

Engineers Week is a week long programme of nationwide events with the aim of celebrating the world of engineering in Ireland. Events for primary, post-primary students and families will take place across the country during the week.

Each student participant in this year’s event will be in with the chance of winning a fantastic trip to visit the NEMO Science Center in Amsterdam.

There will also be a photography competition – launch date early January 2011

Log on to www.EngineersWeek.ie to find out more about the free interactive events taking place in your county for Engineers Week 2011

Colm Connolly from Clones in Co Monaghan, Vincent Murray from Ballygowan and David Crudden from south Belfast scooped the $25,000 prize in the VT KnowledgeWorks Global Student Business Challenge in Virginia in the US.

All three students graduated from Queen’s with degrees in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering this summer. They impressed the judges in Virgina with their Ecosy heater, which they developed as a final-year project.

The innovative heater is fuelled by renewable wood pellets. It reduces operation costs, increases product mobility and has a significantly lower carbon output when compared to current gas or electric patio heaters.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Vincent Murray, who is also Queen’s Student of the Year 2010, said: “We knew we had a good product and a strong business case, but we were up against teams from across the world, and the standard of competition was really high, so we were both delighted and rather shocked when we won.”

Earlier this year the team won the top prize in Queen’s annual “What’s the Big Idea?” competition, before going on to win the Royal Academy of Engineering Innovation Hothouse Award for Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Learn more

Find out more on Facebook about the VT KnowledgeWorks competition for students