The biennial Earth Institute Awards aim to bring together the Institute community to celebrate the contributions and achievements of staff and postgraduate students from all disciplines who have demonstrated research excellence, innovation, impact and/or citizenship through their work.
Awards are by nomination and are made in six categories:
- Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Award
- Emerging Researcher Award
- Early Career Academic Award
- Good Citizenship Award
- Long Service Contribution Award
- Earth Day communication Award
Our 2025 Awards are now open for nomination and will be announced on Thursday 22 May in a ceremony in the UCD O'Brien Centre for Science.
Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Award
This award celebrates interdisciplinary collaboration in our community and is open to research collaborations that includes two or more researchers from different disciplines in the area of environmental, climate or sustainability research.
2023 Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Award
Prof. Meriel McClatchie and Dr Sónia Negrão from UCD Schools of Archaeology and Biology and Environmental Science
Supporting and developing interdisciplinary connections and collaborations is at the core of what we do in the Earth Institute. This collaboration is a brilliant example of this – from an initial conversation at a UCD connector event, through further connections at an Earth Institute coffee morning and support through our Strategic Priority programme, this collaboration between an archaeobotanist and a crop scientist explores how underutilized crops produced in Europe have the potential to supply key nutrients and improve diets and risk of diet-related diseases, engaging with the historic production of food, state-of-the-art science, as well as policy implications. The collaboration has led to funding from the Irish Research Council COALESCE programme and the development of a pan-European network of collaborators supported through an EU COST action.
Emerging Researcher Award
This award celebrates the research achievements and contributions of early career researchers, including PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows working in areas relating to Earth Institute thematic areas, in all disciplines.
Nomination process: Application to this award is by nomination. Nominators can be a colleague, supervisor, Head of School, or someone else who is familiar with the work of the nominee.
2023 Emerging Researcher Award
Dr Shane Mc Guinness, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy for his work developing and co-leading the €23M EU WaterLANDS project, his impactful work on the Biodiversity Financial Needs Assessment as well as Peatland Finance Ireland.
2023 Highly commended
- Dr Aparajita Banerjee, UCD College of Business
- Dr Claudia Dellacasa, UCD School of English, Drama and Film
- Holly English, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science
- Jiaqi Shi, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science
Early Career Academic Award
The Early Career Academic Award celebrates UCD Assistant Professor/Ad Astra early career academics within five years of their first academic appointment (excluding periods outside academia and career breaks) who are working in areas relating to Earth Institute thematic areas, in all disciplines. Nominated academics should demonstrate research excellence, innovation, impact and/or citizenship, relative to their career stage, discipline and/or their personal circumstances.
Nomination process: Application to this award is by nomination. Nominators can be a colleague, Head of School, or someone else who is familiar with the work of the nominee.
2023 Early Career Academic Award
Dr Joanna Kacprzyk, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science, for her work pushing the boundaries of plant stress research, her advocacy of plant science in general, her teaching and her science outreach – and as her nominator put it, she is ‘the model good colleague’
2023 Highly commended
- Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo, UCD College of Business
Good Citizenship Award
The Good Citizenship Award celebrates UCD academics, research fellows, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, research, technical and administrative staff who are working in areas relating to Earth Institute thematic areas, in all disciplines. This award is to recognise good citizenship, collegiality and those members of our community who go above and beyond to help others.
Nomination process: Application to this award is by nomination. Nominators can be a colleague, Head of School, or someone else who is familiar with the work and activities of the nominee.
2023 Good Citizenship Awards
- Dr Louise Dunne, Research Manager in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy: As her nominator stated, Louise is an indispensable colleague, without whom the sections of the School would not be nearly so successful at winning research funding. She is quietly efficient and rarely gets the recognition she deserves. She is a valuable connection point between the different parts of the school, helping achieve a level of collegiality and cooperation between them.
- Dr Tine Ningal, Chief Technical Officer in the School of Geography: Tine’s impact across his school goes far beyond technical support, including teaching, supervision of masters students, support for fieldtrips and the establishment of a very successful school on drones that has attracted external stakeholders from industry and individuals from the UCD community.
- Deborah Schrijvers, a PhD student in the School of English, Drama and Film, has been instrumental in in the environmental humanities research strand at UCD, volunteering her time to develop new international networks of early career researchers and using her social media expertise to champion the work of her colleagues.
2023 Highly commended
- Dr Sharae Deckard, UCD School of English, Drama and Film
- Prof. Donna Marshall, UCD College of Business
- Dr Jon Yearsley, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science,
Long Service Contribution Award
This award seeks to acknowledge the significant contribution of members of our community who are retiring or leaving UCD after long service.
2023 Long Service Contribution Awards
Dr Karen Foley, Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy
Prof. Eugene O’Brien, UCD School of Civil Engineering
Dr Karen Foley from Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, has been instrumental in establishing UCD at the forefront of Landscape Architecture education in Ireland. UCD is the only university in Ireland to offer an undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture, a course which is now accredited by the Irish Landscape Institute and recognised internationally by IFLA, the global body for landscape architecture.
Karen's early research work looked at developing landscape assessment methodologies as effective research interests lie in the area of landscape change, landscape preference, stakeholder engagement and urban resilience planning tools. She later focussed on the vernacular Irish landscape, examining landscape preference, drivers of landscape change and exploring scenario-based tools to engage with a range of stakeholders. Her work has always foregrounded societal input and impact – she has worked on and led award-winning projects on urban resilience and sustainability, coastal communities adapting to climate change.
In addition, as our nominator states, Karen has been a wise, supportive and perceptive supervisor to members of her research team, and an inspirational and supportive teacher, as well as a key member of the Earth Institute’s executive committee, developing and establishing our Sustainable Communities research theme which goes from strength to strength due to her leadership with Nessa Winston from Social Policy.
Our second recipient is Prof. Eugene O’Brien from the School of Civil Engineering. Eugene was the founding President of the International Society for Weigh-in-Motion and has been awarded a Champions of European Research award for Cross-modal Transportation, in recognition of an outstanding lifetime contribution to research in cross-modal transportation.
Eugene’s research developed the first ever method to quantify the traffic loading on long-span bridges. This means that, unlike previously, we can now calculate the true safety of these bridges, which has benefits not only for human safety but also for economics and traffic management. To widen the impact of his research, Eugene is director and co-founder of Civil Engineering firm Roughan O’Donovan’s subsidiary Innovative Solutions, which has worked on numerous national and international academic and commercial projects. Optimising the use of bridges also has a key environmental impact - being able to assess bridge safety more accurately allows us to keep bridges open for longer, extending their working life and thus reducing their carbon footprint, without compromising the safety of the traveling public.
Eugene was director the UCD Urban Institute, a forebear of the Earth Institute, as well as a valued member of the Institute’s executive committee and advocate for multidisciplinary collaboration. Recently he wrote the final report for CEDR, the European Road Owners association, on Roads and Biodiversity – finding ways to improve the biodiversity of road verges, and in 2023, his 39th PhD student successfully defended his thesis.
Earth Day Communication Award
Awarded to the winner of the Earth Institute's annual Earth Day research flash talks competition for PhD and postdoctoral researchers.
2024 Earth Day Communication Award
Dr Aisling Moffatt, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science
Past award recipients
2023: Isobel Stanley, UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science
2022: Patrick Lanagan, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science
2021: Alison O'Reilly, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science
2020: Dan Giles, UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics