Artificial sky in the built environment lab at the UCD Earth Institute
The Earth Institute at University College Dublin (UCD) is today hosting a showcase to demonstrate its research around energy, the environment and climate change and to identify opportunities for future partnerships between industry and academia.
The event, which is taking place at UCD’s O’Reilly Hall, is expected to attract around 200 people, including researchers and representatives from industry and state agencies.
With the Irish Government having revealed its plans to help bring about a low-carbon economy in its Our Sustainable Future strategy earlier this year, the UCD Earth Institute is hosting today’s event to highlight the research taking place within the institute and to identify possible industry link-ups.
“Our aim is that this inaugural showcase event will become an annual event which will result in the establishment of multiple new collaborative partnerships of mutual benefit between industry, enterprise, and UCD’s research and innovation community,” said Prof Peter Clinch, UCD vice-president for innovation.
There will be networking sessions at today’s event to identify collaborations between researchers and industry around areas such as the harnessing of Ireland’s energy, water and mineral resources, climate change and smart cities.
UCD researchers will also be giving talks on the UCD Earth Institute research clusters, taking in climate adaptation, mitigation and geohazards, earth resources characterisation, smart cities and infrastructure, and policy and economics.
Dr Kevin O’Connor, a UCD Earth Institute researcher, will also speak about how he went about setting up a UCD spin-out, Bioplastech. The start-up has developed a process that converts waste materials into biodegradable plastic.
Other speakers will include Dr Ciaran Peyton from Tullow Oil and Steve Clarke from Mainstream Renewable Power who will discuss their experiences of collaborating with academia.
