Joe Awards, Outreach

Lindau Sciathon: “Anansi Webinars” (3rd Place)

A new platform for sharing details of online seminars, and a call to “open the doors of seminar rooms worldwide” was the proposal of Team Elmiger, a group which Joe joined to compete in the inaugural 48-hour Sciathon contest, taking place as part of the Lindau “Online Science Days 2020”.

Team Elmiger meeting over Zoom to work on their project

The team of scientists and economists from around the world wrote a report and made a video over the course of the weekend about the importance of connecting the world to inspiring research talks. In particular, they highlighted the value of harnessing the shift to online events, which has been a consequence of the Coronavirus crisis, to invite researchers from the developing world to attend seminars in leading universities. The team built a prototype website to demonstrate how this could be achieved, and set out a plan about how this could be developed in future to create a more open and connected world. The team was a collaboration between researchers in the developed and developing world, and a clear example of the strength of bringing diverse people together, which is key to the vision of the Lindau-Nobel Foundation.

A panel of international judges awarded Team Elmiger the 3rd Prize in the Category “Implementing the Lindau Guidelines“.

See the video below:

Anansi Webinars reportDownload REPORT (PDF)

Joe Outreach

Karolina and Joe at Young Scientist Exhibition stand

Kitchen Chemistry at BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2020

Karolina and Joe joined the team from Kitchen Chemistry, who spent a day representing NUI Galway’s College of Science at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. It was a long but engaging day of demonstrating simple chemistry experiments to members of the public of all ages, from primary school children up. In particular it was a chance to talk to the many secondary school students who attend this annual event about studying science, and particularly chemistry, at university level.

There were some very high-quality projects on display at the competition, presented by students who had a good understanding of how to carry out a well-designed scientific project. The future is bright.

Joe Conferences, Outreach

Dillon Symposium Public Session videos

The Public Session of the Dillon Centenary Symposium is available to view on YouTube. This includes the Dillon Threesis Challenge (young researchers talking about their work for 3 minutes with zero jargon), a chemistry-inspired ballet and historical talk about Prof Dillon.

Selected lectures from the Scientific Session are available as a playlist here.

Not all lectures were broadcast. Consult the programme to see who is currently speaking. The “Public Session” from 17.00 GMT was broadcast.

Update 20/12/2019: More edited videos of the threesis and ballet, filmed from various angles are now available as a playlist here.

Joe Outreach

Walk for Cystic Fibrosis Ireland

Joe raised funds for Cystic Fibrosis Ireland by taking part in their annual Head2Head walk around Dublin Bay. Our research aims to develop diagnostic tools that could speed up diagnosis of P. aeruginosa infections, a widespread problem for people with CF – it seemed only right to try to raise some funds for organisations supporting people with the disease. Thanks to everyone who donated!

Joe in Sandymount starting his walk. The destination is at the end of the headland just next to his left ear!
Joe Outreach

CÚRAM Poetry Slam

In June 2019, CÚRAM SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices invited its researchers to write some poetry in a workshop with Todd Robinson and recite these poems in public at ‘The Dark Horse’ pub in Athlone. This is the work of Team ‘Drug Delivery 1′ and comprises Liam Fitzgerald, Neville Murphy, Marita Dangol, Joseph Byrne, Miriam O’ Duill and Antonio Monterru.

This was a strange departure from normal scientific communication, and I think we learned a lot about how to use language (but I’m not sure the examples in the video were necessarily the best examples of that!)