Our 200th member(s)!
Tuesday, 18 March, 2025
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We have been delighted to welcome thirteen new members to the Earth Institute since the turn of the year, with their arrival bringing the Institute's academic membership to over 200. The Institute has members in every UCD College and in 30 of the university's 37 Schools, and this wide, diverse multidisciplinary mix is one of our great strengths as a research community - you can find full details of all our members in our members directory.
New arrivals in 2025
(opens in a new window)Sourav Bhattacharjee is an assistant professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine with an interest in One Health, which explores the intersection of environmental, animal and human health. Sourav's work is primarily as an anatomist and in drug delivery, drug design, and biophotonics, with particular emphasis in nanomedicine, working across both human and veterinary anatomy.
(opens in a new window)Gary Boyd returned to UCD last year as Full Professor of Architecture, in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy. Gary has a wide range of research interests which include the design and history of housing; supermarkets and the production of food; architecture and waste; architecture, sustainability and energy systems; architecture of heritage; architecture and ordnance; architectural modernisms; industrial architectural; and extractive industries,which is the focus of a European Research Council Advanced Grant exploring the architecture of coal in modern Europe.
(opens in a new window)Sarah Browne (School of Public Health Physiotherapy and Sports Science) works in the area of clinical nutrition and dietetics. Her work focuses on the integration of interdisciplinary core cognitive competencies in education for sustainable development and sustainable food systems in dietetics education. Some of Sarah's research activity involves secondary school food environment and structural factors that would enhance experiences of healthy food at school - Sarah is interested in engaging with Institutemembersworking in space and place and how to make public spaces more sustainable to enhance public health. Sarah also works with a dietetics programme and colleagues in Malawi and is interested in connecting with others at UCD working with the global south to ensure ethical and sustainable practices in global partnerships.
(opens in a new window)Michelle Carey is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Statistics; her research involves developing and extending functional data analysis techniques for examining the evolution of systems in terms of differential equations. Michelle applies this work to areas including climatology, finance and medicine.
(opens in a new window)Allen Higgins is a research associate in the College of Business with an interest in design phenomena across a number of fields: design for accessibility; game design; software engineering in virtual teams; digital economics; digital policy and standards; outsourcing and logistics; and teaching approaches in higher education.
(opens in a new window)Devon Kerins has recently joined the School of Civil Engineering as an assistant professor. Devon's work explores how humans impact the environment and water resources. Using data-driven and reactive transport models, her research investigates the interactions between water flow, biogeochemical processes, watershed structure, and external forcings to understand how climate and land-use change influences terrestrial-aquatic carbon cycling and water quality.
(opens in a new window)Brian Leonard is an assistant professor in agricultural and food economics in the School of Agriculture and Food Science. His research interests include farm succession and inheritance, farm diversification, and rural development, working across the social sciences, economics, and geography
(opens in a new window)Alessia Paccagnini, associate professor in the College of Business, is committed to promoting diversity and equity in research and policy-making. Alessia is looking to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative forecasting tools and economic models that integrate climate risks, sustainability, and diversity considerations.
(opens in a new window)Saptarshi Sen is an Assistant Professor/CDIC Lecturer in UCD School of Civil Engineering. He teaches transportation engineering modules in UCD as well as Chang'an Dublin International College of Transportation Engineering in China. Saptarshi's research interests include user perception and travel behaviour, transportation demand and sustainable mobility, road safety and the health impacts of travel behaviour.
(opens in a new window)Seaneen Sloan is a social scientist in the School of Education working in the area of children, youth, and education. Seaneen is co-director of a developing research infrastructure, Growing Up in Digital Europe (GUIDE), which will be the first pan-European longitudinal cohort study of children's wellbeing. GUIDE is also part of a new consortium of leading European social science research infrastructures successful in a recent Horizon Europe call with funding to study societal aspects of the green transition for different generations and socioeconomic groups across Europe, using a life-course perspective. UCD will lead on aspects relating to children and young people's views, and the survey tools developed will be used in the first wave of GUIDE survey data collection in 2027.
(opens in a new window)Ítalo Sousa de Sena (School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy) has expertise in Geographical Virtual Environments and immersive landscape visualisation. His research leverages Minecraft for landscape analysis and engagement, and places an emphasis participatory processes.
(opens in a new window)Ye Tian(School of Geography) is a GIS scientist and his overarching goal is to develop effective strategies to optimise the urban built environment, mitigate environmental pollution, enhance environmental justice, and inform public health interventions in global cities. Research interests include mobile monitoring of environmental pollution in urban settings; geospatial model of 2D and 3D urban building morphology; interplay between urban built environment and environmental pollutants and carbon emissions; and quantitative analysis on individual exposure risks and social justice.
(opens in a new window)Yunpeng Zhang from the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy works to develop a critical understanding of the urban-centric transformations under neoliberal financial capitalism and the lived experiences of people caught up in these processes through a combination of different qualitative research techniques. His research is centred around four areas: the political economy and politics of the production of the built environment; the changing structures, value orientations, and crafts of the state; comparative urbanism and the politics of knowledge; and the platformisation-urbanisation nexus.
Welcome all!