As an Associate Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Limerick, Professor McCarthy leads a research group, who are developing novel methods to join high performance composite materials to other lightweight materials, to result in structures with superior strength and stiffness properties, and with only a fraction of the weight compared to typical steel or aluminium structures.
This work has attracted over €6million in competitively won research funding from Europe, Irish research funding agencies and both national and international Industries. His research has led to over 150 high impact publications and a patent pending on a new smart glue that can be “unzipped” using only high-frequency radio waves for applications in automotive assembly down to dental implants. Professor McCarthy is an SFI Principal Investigator and leads major research programmes in Engineering Science.
Professor McCarthy is a Principal Investigator and the Director of CONFIRM.