This year’s All Ireland Conference for Undergraduate Research (AICUR) had its highest numbers of undergraduate research participants to date, and took place in the Kemmy Business School, UL on 28th March, 2019.

The keynote speech for the 6th annual event was delivered by Seamus Hickey. Seamus was part of the 2018 Limerick All-Ireland winning senior hurling team, is Chair of the Gaelic Players Association (GPA), and is a UL alumnus. Seamus successfully defended his PhD thesis from UL in 2018 and works as the Research Projects Coordinator for Johnson & Johnson.

THE Irish economy benefitted by €8.9 billion last year from Ireland’s seven universities newly published research has confirmed.

The first ever socio-economic impact research undertaken on the role universities play in the economy and society has been carried out by Indecon Research Economists who were appointed by the Irish Universities Association, following a competitive tender process, to cover the combined impact of the seven universities represented by the IUA – University of Limerick, Dublin City University, Maynooth University, NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin.

Dr Jason Power

A UNIQUE study by a lecturer at the University of Limerick has revealed that classic arcade game Pac-Man can provide insights into human behaviour and psychology.

The research by Dr Jason Power, a lecturer at UL’s School of Education, examined the impact of a person’s belief about their own capabilities and how this influences their performance by using the classic 1980s video game to look at daily behaviour.

Dr Power explains: “Pac-Man’s difficulty slowly ramps up to allow even the most casual players to experience success. This builds a person’s belief that they can succeed and encourages them to try again.”

Once every year, more than 30 Nobel Laureates convene in Lindau to meet the next generation of leading scientists.

The 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (#LINO19) takes place on  June 30 – July 5th   and will be dedicated to physics,  key topics are cosmology, laser physics and gravitational waves.

The opportunity to join the annual gathering of Nobel Laureates at Lindau is provided exclusively to outstanding young scientists aged up to 35 – undergraduates, PhD students, and post-doc researchers. In order to participate in a meeting, they have to pass a multi-step application and selection process.

Irish second level students are in with a chance to develop a science experiment for testing on a microgravity flight this October to help address the issue of sustaining life beyond this planet.

Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) will fly a number of microgravity flights in Ottawa, Canada at the National Research Council and thanks to a unique partnership with The Irish Composites Centre (IComp) at University of Limerick, Irish students will be part of those flights.

Irish second level students are in with a chance to develop a science experiment for testing on a microgravity flight this October to help address the issue of sustaining life beyond this planet.

Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) will fly a number of microgravity flights in Ottawa, Canada at the National Research Council and thanks to a unique partnership with The Irish Composites Centre (IComp) at University of Limerick, Irish students will be part of those flights.

L-R Back Tony O’Donovan, Kerstin Mey, Fergal Lynch, Sean Redmond L-R Front Mary Shire, Michelle Shannon, Conor Rowley, Shane Kilcommins

The University of Limerick was pleased to welcome Dr Fergal Lynch, Secretary General of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs today to discuss the progress of the REPPP project located in the School of Law, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr Lynch was accompanied by Assistant Secretary Michelle Shannon and Principal Officers Tony O’Donovan and Conor Rowley.

Commenting on the Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice (REPPP) project, Dr Lynch said

Conor Rowley & Prof Sean Redmond

Wicked problems are problems which are resistant to change, which morph over time and turn would-be ideal solutions into worse problems that persist; examples are no-go zones in urban areas, serious drug related activity and lack of pro-social leadership in communities devastated by routine criminal activity. Large scale evidence based programmes tip away at the edge of wicked problems, which severely expose the state, they do not fit into the administrative remit of one state agency or the other. Most significant of all wicked problems tend to be context specific.

Our Research Impact podcast series has allowed us to showcase the impact of the wide range of research being carried out by our female academics. Prof Anne Mac Farlane, Prof Sheila Killian and Dr Jakki Cooney (l-r above) are just three of the more recent participants in this series. You can check out all of the previous podcasts in this series on our Reseach Impact podcast channel (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podomatic). 

In partnership with University College Dublin and Maynooth University, University of Limerick is to lead a new €21million SFI Centre for Research Training in Foundations of Data Science, with industry partners coordinated by Skillnet Ireland.

Announced by Minister Heather Humphreys TD Minister for Business, Enterprise, and Innovation, and Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, John Halligan TD, the centre has been awarded funding of €13.6 million by Science Foundation Ireland.  The Centre for Research Training (CRT) will train 139 PhD students towards a world-class foundational understanding of Applied Mathematics, Statistics, and Machine Learning.