Sarah Guerin. Image: Alan Place
Is it possible to harness the power of raindrops to create the ‘ultimate Irish solar panel’? Dr Sarah Guerin tells us more.
Earlier this year, citizens and stakeholders from Limerick participated in the University of Limerick (UL) Citizens’ Assembly to discuss the UN’s sustainable development goals and how they could be employed for the benefit of the county. Assembly participants voted to award three research projects €10,000 each to develop their community-based projects.
One of the winners was a project which aims to harness the kinetic energy of pedestrian movement to generate electricity. It is led by Dr Sarah Guerin from UL’s Department of Physics.
Guerin undertook a BSc in applied physics at UL where she developed computer models that are now used to guide her research. She went on to complete a PhD before gaining a postdoctoral position in SSPC, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals.
In 2022, she became an associate professor in UL after receiving funding from the European Research Council and SFI to set up her own lab and research team. Here, Guerin tells us more about her work.
Tell us about your current research.
I made a discovery during my PhD that some of the small molecules in our body, if crystallised in the lab, can be used as eco-friendly sensors. This led me to apply for a number of grants to develop these materials as fully functional sensing devices, to replace materials that are damaging to the environment.
These materials have potential applications in medical devices, as well as being natural energy harvesters – they can generate electricity from the everyday forces around us, such as walking or vibrations.
My first PhD student, Krishna, started in April 2022, and now we have grown to a team of nine researchers, spanning chemistry, physics, engineering and computer science.
In your opinion, why is your research important?
Sustainability in how we live our lives and the materials that we use is more important than ever. Our research aims to use eco-friendly materials to replace one of the last remaining modern-day technologies that uses the element lead – piezoelectric ceramics. By using eco-friendly materials, we can see energy harvesting becoming a huge part of sustainable living around the world – a future where we can charge electronics for free with our daily steps or even the forces from raindrops. The ultimate ‘Irish solar panel’ – that’s our goal!
What inspired you to become a researcher?
By the time I was a postdoc I knew that I wanted to be an academic researcher as a career. Putting together a team to solve global challenges, teaching undergraduate students, working with scientists around the world, publishing discoveries – it’s a challenging and diverse job that’s different every day. Seeing researchers in UL and beyond making real change and building a community of researchers, that’s what inspired me to choose this path.
What are some of the biggest challenges or misconceptions you face as a researcher in your field?
Firstly, the challenge with having a fun job means you have to remind yourself that it is a job, not your life! There are also still some misconceptions around women in science – if you ask someone to draw a scientist you will still see a lot of Einstein cartoons – but I do think a lot of progress has been made inside and outside of academia.
There are lot of challenges more broadly about making science more diverse and accessible. Research can be relatively straightforward, even when it is intellectually challenging, but the environment that we create for people to do research in is the biggest challenge of all.
Do you think public engagement with science and data has changed in recent years?
Honestly, it’s weird to be living in a time of some of the greatest scientific discoveries to date and also the biggest public rejection of scientific progress. I think the combination of the pandemic and the internet means that scientists have a bigger role to play in calling out misinformation, as well as misrepresentation of research and the scientific method.
On the other side of things, we also need to call out misuse of new technologies such as AI. However, I think in most cases that can be achieved with community-level public engagement instead of fighting on the internet.
How do you encourage engagement with your own work?
Even the most fundamental research has a purpose, and engaging people really just means telling the story of what you are doing and why you are doing it.
With our current research, I think engagement and impact require doing work to make people’s lives better. The UL Citizen’s Assembly this year is giving us the chance to use our piezoelectric technologies on the streets of Limerick to give people access to free charging stations. And this summer we kicked off a citizen science project where people around Ireland can grow our crystals in their home and send them back to us for testing.
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