News
11. December 2024
Sai and Aaron were co-authors on the EPTA paper entitled The impact on astrometry by solar-wind effect in pulsar timing published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 
9. December 2024
Mick from the TAPAS team presented the team’s work Assessing Climate Adaptation and Intervention Impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa using Deep Learning on Earth Observation Data at AGU24, held in Washington, D.C. 9-13 December 2024. 
2. December 2024
Aaron was invited to judge the annual Centre for Research Training in Genomics Data Sciences Biohackathon held in the ILAS Building on the University of Galway campus. Some amazing work presented! 
21. November 2024
Aaron attended the bi-annual European Southern Observatory National Advisory Committee at the invitation of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, hosted by TUS at their Athlone campus. 
14. November 2024
Aaron was involved in the first National - and highly successful - Space Advisory Forum for Space Research meeting that took place in University College Dublin involving stakeholders from industry, government, public bodies and the HEI/RPO sectors. 
6. November 2024
Jemima and Patricia from the TAPAS project attended the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) - the largest FinTech festival in the world - at the invitation of colleagues from the Asian Development Bank to explore climate adaptation risk analysis strategies using the TAPAS platform. 
23. October 2024
Aaron participated in a two-day workshop hosted by Research Ireland and the National Science Foundation to explore Collaborative Challenge Opportunities between Ireland and the United States. 
17. October 2024
Sal’s second PhD paper ‘Spin-orbit alignment in very low mass tight binaries: results for the 2MASS J0746425+200032AB and 2MASS J1314203+132001AB systems using spectroscopic and optically derived rotational estimates’ was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics - congratulations Sal! 
16. October 2024
Aaron attended the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science’s Science Summit, hosted by Minister Patrick O’Donovan, at Farmleigh House. 
8. October 2024
Mick and Jemima presented a talk titled ‘Improving GRACE spatial resolution to small river basin scale in Ireland using a deep learning model - a twenty-year study’ at the GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team Meeting held at the GFZ in Potsdam, Germany. 
19. September 2024
The TAPAS team were invited to participate in a meeting involving UCC’s Centre for Global Development, the Irish Forum for International Agricultural Development (IFIAD), members of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and government delegates from Cambodia, Mongolia, and Vietnam. 
16. September 2024
Aaron travelled to London to attend the 5th Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund Luncheon at the Institute of Physics honouring the latest cohort of scholars. 
13. September 2024
Aaron participated at the first National Advisory Forum on Space Research Working Group meeting hosted by Research Ireland in Dublin 
29. August 2024
Sai did a terrific job chairing the Radio Astronomy & Instrumentation session at the Irish National Astronomy Meeting (INAM) 2024, hosted by the Centre for Astronomy and the amazing AstroSoc at the University of Galway 
9. July 2024
The TAPAS Project’s landmark paper on assessing the cost-effectiveness and efficacy of a USAID’s $170M irrigation climate adaptation/resilience works between 2010-2015 on rice production in the Senegal River Valley was published in Environmental Research Letters! 
8. July 2024
Aaron officially joined the Square Kilometer Array Observatory Science Working Group on Pulsars 
25. June 2024
Aaron was invited to participate in NASA/ESA’s ‘Using Earth Observation Systems for Climate Adaptation Policy and Action’, a forum between June 25-28 2004 hosted by the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland 
10. June 2024
Aaron was invited to attend the ENLIGHT Impact Awards Ceremony at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, where as a former Impact Awardee took part in the awarding of the prestigious ‘txapel’ to this years winners! 
7. June 2024
The TAPAS team hosted a session entitled ‘1.6.1 Tracking Climate Adaptation and Mitigation in Agricultural Systems using Satellite Remote Sensing’ at the The Mary Robinson Climate Conference 2024 took place 5-7 June in Ballina, Co Mayo, with presentations from Mick, Yared and Mukund Narayanan. 
4. June 2024
As College of Science & Engineering Vice-Dean for Research and Innovation, Aaron was delighted to open the 22nd Galway Topology Colloquium hosted by his former colleagues in the School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences! 
28. May 2024
Dúalta gave a talk titled ‘Leveraging Earth Observation and AI to Assess Climate Adaptation in Agriculture’ at the the globally hosted ICTforAg 2024 meeting. 
22. May 2024
Aaron participated in the SFI sponsored ‘Research on Research Workshop’ held in Dublin. 
21. May 2024
Jemima and Pearse attended the AI4Copernicus ‘Benelux day for shared challenges on water, infrastructure and soil monitoring’ meeting in the Hague, Netherlands 
16. May 2024
Aaron attended the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science’s European Southern Observatory National Advisory Committee meeting in Dublin 
16. May 2024
Dúalta gave a presentation at ESA’s EO for Agriculture under Pressure 2024 Workshop held in Frascati, Italy entitled ‘Quantifying rice adaptation to climate stressors in Senegal using time-dependent deep learning with the TAPAS platform.’
9. May 2024
Busy day running the College of Science & Engineering’s annual Research & Innovation Day in the Galmont Hotel, Galway! 
26. April 2024
Aaron’s application to join the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) was formally approved by the EPTA Executive Committee. 
25. April 2024
Congratulations to Sumaira on successfully defending her doctoral thesis on the role of long non-coding RNAs in cancer! Thanks to examiners Simon McDade & Kasia Whysall on a great day out for the parish!
22. April 2024
Dúalta presented a poster ‘Measuring climate adaptation in the Senegal River Valley with deep learning’ at Climate Informatics 2024, held between 22-22 April 2024 at the Alan Turing Institute, UK. 
17. April 2024
Aaron participated in a meeting between Irish HEIs/national research centres and a visiting CERN Task Force, part of ongoing negotiations that will (hopefully) result with Ireland joining CERN. 
29. February 2024
Congratulations to incoming ICAT fellow Dr. Lisa Kiely! Lisa will be working between UCC and the University of Galway on her PhD project entitled ‘IMAGINE - Imaging Morphea: Advancements for DiaGnosis and INtensive Evaluation’ using a blend of ML, hyperspectral imaging and clinical biomarkers. 
28. February 2024
The TAPAS team held an incredibly productive off-site workshop with with our CGIAR partners in Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT headquarters in Rome. 
23. February 2024
Prof. Martin Hendry from the University of Glasgow visited as part of the Institute of Physics Tyndall Lectures across the country - v. interesting discussions about jointly using LISA and the ELT! 
07. February 2024
Aaron presented on the group’s research activities using European Space Agency missions as part of ESA’s Director of Science Prof. Carole Mundell’s visit to Ireland, hosted by Dunsink Observatory. 
05. February 2024
Aaron was part of a national delegation visiting CERN to progress Ireland’s proposed membership. Amazing experience! 
01. February 2024
Brian’s abstract Fundus Features Relate to Severity of Visual Field Loss in Acute Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy (NAION) has been scheduled as a Paper Presentation for the 2024 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting between May 5 - 9 in Seattle. Congratulations Brian! 
18. January 2024
Aaron attended the Institute of Physics Gravitational Physics Annual Meeting in London, where the focus was on the gravitational physics of pulsars. 
20. December 2023
The lab all went out to lunch at Ard Bia to celebrate a great year’s work. Here’s to greater things in 2024! 
11. December 2023
Sai will be contributing at a European Pulsar Timing Array workshop hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany between 12-15 December 2023. 
5. December 2023
Parisa won a poster prize at the Irish Computational Biology and Genomics Symposium held at the University of Galway on Dec 4-5 2023 for her work on a radiogenomics study of NSCLC using PET imaging 
4. December 2023
Aaron gave a talk to the Galway Astronomy Club on a history of astronomical instrumentation development at the University of Galway, from the TRIFFID high-speed imager in the 1990s to ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope’s MORFEO instrument today.
1. December 2023
Brian was awarded the best presentation prize at the Irish Clinical Academic Training network annual retreat held in Malahide, Co. Dublin on Nov 30 - Dec 1 2023 for his research blitz talk on machine learning applied to optic neuropathies. 
30. November 2023
The Environmental Protection Agency published Research Report 443: Remote Sensing of Irish Surface Waters based on a combined analysis of earth observation and field work conducted by teams from the University of Galway and Dundalk Institute of Technology, coordinated by Aaron. 
10. November 2023
HRB Summer Scholar Eva Langan’s poster entitled ‘Total Copy Number Alteration Burden in Adrenocortical Carcinoma is a Prognostic Indicator for Survival Outcome’ was selected from the School of Medicine Undergraduate Research Conference held on Oct. 13 2023 to be presented at the Atlantic Corridor Research Conference held on the University of Galway campus on 10 Nov 2023. 
2. November 2023
Jemima is presenting the TAPAS team’s work on upsampling gravitational anomaly data derived from NASA’s GRACE mission to better characterise Total Water Storage variations in the Senegal River Valley at the MAGIC Science and Applications Workshop in Assisi, Italy between Nov 2-3 2023. 
27. October 2023
‘Clear skies!’ for Mick Ryan who starts a 14 night observing run using the Galway Ultra Fast Imager (GUFI!) on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on the summit of Mount Graham, Arizona. 
16. October 2023
Patricia will be representing the TAPAS Project at the 6th International Rice Congress’ being held in Manila, Philippines between 16th-19th October 2023. 
13. October 2023
Congratulations to HRB Summer Scholar student Eva Langan for presenting her project `Total copy number alteration burden in adrenocortical carcinoma is a prognostic indicator for survival outcome’ at the University Research Day organised by the School of Medicine. 
11. October 2023
Aaron talked about enhancing student research self-efficacy skills using a `flipped’ journal club methodology at the ENLIGHT Teaching and Learning Conference hosted by the University of Bordeaux between 10-13 October 2023. 
18. September 2023
Aaron spent a week on an ERASMUS+ staff mobolity exchange to the Division of Applied Nuclear Physics at the University of Uppsala to get trained up on teaching nuclear energy systems - here is a live-streamed view of the Slovenian reactor the Swedish students get to use as part of their degree programmes (complete with technician pointing out the core…) 
29. June 2023
We’re all delighted for Sai as he leads the the University of Galway’s contribution contribution to the European Pulsar Timing Array’s goal of using radio pulsars to detect ultra-low frequency gravitational waves from extragalactic supermassive black hole binary systems! 
8. September 2023
Astrophysicist Prof. Sarah Tuttle from the University of Washington delivering an inspiring barnstormer talk about the future of astronomical instrumentation during Notre Dame’s CGM@ND Workshop visit to the University of Galway from their base in Kylemore Abbey. 
25. August 2023
PhD student Sai Chaitanya Susarla talked about his research on using radio pulsars to study space weather & gravitational waves at INAM 2023 
24. August 2023
PhD student Deirdre Ní Chonchubhair presented her research on detecting coronal mass ejections in nearby stellar systems & what this means for life on other planetary systems at INAM 2023 👽 
17. August 2023
Congratulations to Rob Ferguson who graduated today with his MSc by research for his work on the pulsar PSR B0656+14 using the I-LOFAR radio telescope (seen here with Sai and Deirdre)! Many thanks to Prof. Maura McLaughlin for acting as external examiner 🙏 
19. June 2023
Aaron started a 7 night observing run studying brown dwarfs using the Galway Ultra Fast Imager (GUFI) at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, part of the Mount Graham International Observatory, Arizona. 
16. June 2023
Sumaira represented the University of Galway at the first All-Ireland RNA Club meeting held in the University of Maynooth 
1. June 2023
Sai was awarded 24.5 hours observing time on LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) for his proposal Tracing the Heliosphere with pulsars - congratulations Sai! 
18. May 2023
Sumaira presented her research on lncRNA derived peptides in cancer immunotherapy at the EMBO Workshop Non-coding RNA Medicine held in Poznan, Poland. Congratulations Sumaira! 
4. May 2023
Parisa’s poster A PET Radiomic Signature to Predict Survival in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients was awarded 1st place in the Innovation for Health category at the College of Science & Engineering first Research and Innovation Day at the Galmont Hotel in Galway. Congratulations Parisa! 
4. May 2023
The TAPAS team was well represented (1 talk and 3 posters) at the College of Science & Engineering first Research and Innovation Day at the Galmont Hotel in Galway. 
18. April 2023
Best of luck to Sai who has been selected to give an oral presentation on his hunt for gravitational waves using pulsars at the American Physical Society April Meeting Quarks to Cosmos being held in Minneapolis, MN. 
13. April 2023
The first light images from the upgraded GUFI camera taken at VATT of the globular cluster NGC5466 have been released by collaborator Ray Butler aided by grad student Mick Ryan - they look spectacular! 
6. April 2023
Congratulations to 3rd year Genetics & Genomics student Eva Langan, who will be working with us with her recently awarded HRB Summer Scholarship on the transcriptomics of adrenocortical carcinomas. 
30. March 2023
Aaron represented the TAPAS Project at the ENLIGHT Impact Conference held between 29-31 March 2023 and hosted by the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao. 
23. March 2023
Aaron attended Self Help Africa’s Science for Development Award showcase held at Iveagh House hosted by IrishAid & the Department of Foreign Affairs 
3. March 2023
Delighted to host Prof. Caitriona Jackman from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies on her visit to the University to present the 2023 IOP Tyndall Lecture!
1. March 2023
Welcome to Ross Trearty! Ross is joining the TAPAS team where he’ll focus on the development of advanced statistical & ML models to better estimate crop yields from remote sensing data. 
23. February 2023
Collaborators Ray Butler & Mick Ryan start a 10 night run on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope using the upgraded GUFI camera - clear skies! 
19. January 2023
Welcome to Jemima O’Farrell! Jemima is joining the TAPAS team where she’ll be applying her coding skills to tracking the effects of climate change on food production using Google Earth Engine 
6. January 2023
Aaron spoke at the University of Galway College of Science & Engineering’s ‘Sustainable Development Goals Research Support Fund’ launch and SDG Ideation workshop about the TAPAS Project and Challenge Funding more generally. 
4. January 2023
Welcome to Yared Tessema! Yared! Yared is joining the TAPAS team where he’ll be using his background in agronomy and remote sensing to enhance our stakeholder interactions 
4. January 2023
Welcome (back!) to Dr. Michael Geever and Dr. Dúalta Ó Fionnagáin! Dúalta and Mick will be taking the lead in developing the technical/AI infrastructure for the TAPAS project. 
14. November 2022
Aaron’s paper ‘Teaching graduate research skills in genomics via an integrated flipped journal club program’ has been published by Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education 
19. October 2022
Aaron particpated in a Self-Help Africa Science for Development webinar about climate change and it’s impact on agriculture. 
3. October 2022
Welcome to Patricia Codyre! Patrica is joining the TAPAS team as project manager! 
26. September 2022
Elif, Rob and Dúalta will be presenting the lab’s work on using the LOFAR and NenuFAR radiotelescopes to search for planetary lightning at the 9th International Workshop on ‘Planetary, Solar and Heliospheric Radio Emissions’, 26-28 September 2022 in Dublin. 
25. September 2022
Dúalta will be coordinating observations on 25th September of the AU Mic system using both the Giant Metre Radio Telescope in India and the new MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa to study the space weather environment around the exoplanet AU Mic b 
3. September 2022
Aaron spoke about an an astronomer’s take on the ‘Stories of the Air’/Spéirscéalta as part of the Samhail Collective’s contribution to SFI’s Human Lab at the Electric Picnic Festival, held in Stradbally, Co. Laois. 
18. August 2022
Parisa presented her research today on the PET/CT radiogenomics of non-small cell lung cancers at the IAPM Young Investigator session of the 4th European Congress on Medical Physics, 17-20 August 2022 in Dublin. 
13. August 2022
‘Exploring breast and prostate cancer RNA-seq derived radiosensitivity with the Genomic Adjusted Radiation Dose (GARD) model’ - a paper co-authored by Aaron & former MSc students Ben Nolan and Brian O’Sullivan - has been accepted by Clinical and Translational Radiation Oncology 
12. August 2022
Sai’s observations of pulsars in the ecliptic plane are being conducted by the core stations of the International LOFAR radio telescope today. Here’s hoping everything works to plan! 
10. August 2022
Dúalta presented his work today on exploring scenarios for coronal mass ejections & radio bursts on Epsilon Eridani at IAU Symposium 370: Winds of stars and exoplanets, part of the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Busan, Korea. 
5. July 2022
Former PhD student Sal is presenting results from this work on brown dwarfs at (the rescheduled) Cool Stars 2021 in Toulouse, France. Good luck Sal! 
21. June 2022
Sumaira is presenting her poster entitled ‘LncRNA based antigen load enables prediction of patient’s survival and immunotherapy outcomes in Melanoma’ at the 28th Congress of the European Association for Cancer Research in Seville, Spain today. Good luck Sumaira! 
20. June 2022
Aaron gave a presentation on monitoring space weather using radar and radiotelescope instrumentation to the summer meeting of the Network of Arctic Researchers in Ireland (NARI) at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone 
13. June 2022
Congratulations to Dúalta on being elected a member of the International Astronomical Union! 
04. June 2022
Welcome to Elif Adıgüzel, an Electrical Engineering & Physics student from Koç University, Istanbul. Elif’s Erasmus+ internship will involve working with the I-LOFAR radiotelescope here in Galway 
30. May 2022
‘Loss of MMR and TGFBR2 increases the susceptibility to microbiota-dependent inflammation-associated colon cancer’ - a paper co-authored by Aaron - has been accepted by Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology 
26. May 2022
Aaron co-chaired session C1.04 AI4EO applications for Land and Water, part of the AI and Data Analytics programme at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium held in the World Conference Center Bonn 
05. May 2022
Dúalta has been invited to present at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly to be held in Busan Korea from August 2-11 2022 
30. April 2022
Lydia’s second first-author paper GNOSIS: an R Shiny app supporting cancer genomics survival analysis with cBioPortal has passed peer review in HRB Open Research 
20. April 2022
Congratulations to 3rd year Biomedical Science student Nina Kulczycka on being awarded a School of Maths Summer Internship. Nina will work on analysing phenotypic responses of cancer cell lines to epigenetic modifying drugs. 
03. April 2022
Parisa is attending the Advanced Skills in Radiotherapy Course organised by the European Society Radiation Oncology (ESTRO) in Seville, Spain from 3-8 April 2022 
01. April 2022
Jemima just submitted her Final Year Project based on an analysis of CHIMERA observations of the globular cluster M22 using the 5m Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar 
25. March 2022
Dúalta was just awarded 12 hours time on the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to observe the nearby active star AU Mic to probe the interactions between the stellar wind and the sub-Jupiter exoplanet recently detected within the star’s debris disk. 
23. March 2022
Sai will be attending the next scheduled European Pulsar Timing Array meeting hosted by the Max Planck Institute at Schloss Ringberg in Germany from 23-26 March. 
24. February 2022
Katie just started her 13 night run observing binary brown dwarf systems using the Galway Ultra Fast Imager (GUFI!) on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on Mount Graham International Observatory, Arizona. 
4. January 2022
Welcome to Jorinde Kleverlaan and Sai Chaitanya Susarla! Both Sai and Jorinde will be working on pulsars for their PhDs, and will be jointly supervised by myself and TCD’s Evan Keane. 
10. December 2021
Dúalta was just awarded 18 hours time on the European Very Long Baseline Interferometer Network (EVN) to observe the stellar wind environment of the nearby binary star system Lambda Andromedae. 
3. December 2021
Deadline extended for abstract submissions to session ‘AI4EO applications for Land and Water’ we’re helping to coordinate at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium (23-27 May 2022, Bonn, Germany. 
1. December 2021
Dúalta started coordinating observations of the planet Uranus using the LOFAR radio telescope arrays in Ireland (Birr), Sweden (Onsala) and France (Nançay). 
15. November 2021
Aaron talked about the use of cubesat earth observation satellites to survey and monitor Irish kelp forests on RTE1’s 10 Things to Know About programme. 
14. November 2021
Aaron was interviewed by thejournal.ie about how living and dealing with climate changes in our everyday lives. 
12. November 2021
The lab has been invited to join the Irish Clinical Academic Training Programme, which supports the postgraduate research training of clinicians working in Irish hospitals. 
10. November 2021
Aaron talked about the TAPAS project, winner of SFI’s Future Innovator Prize ‘AI for Societal Good Challenge’, on RTE1’s Science to the Rescue programme, as part of ScienceWeek. 
05. November 2021
Aaron was invited onto the Blindboy podcast to talk about climate change & AI. 
03. November 2021
Dúalta’s manuscript `Coronal mass ejections and type II radio emission variability during a magnetic cycle on the solar-type star ε Eridani’ was accepted by the Astrophysical Journal! (link here). 
13. October 2021
Aaron participated in Ecobot’s Webinar Series co-presenting ‘Wetland Fringe: Sea Kelp Forest Monitoring & Remote Sensing’ 
29. September 2021
Aaron has been elected to the Institute of Physics Environmental Physics Group Committee for a 4 year term. 
24. September 2021
Welcome to Katie Pighini! Katie will be working on the kinematic properties of the nearby tight brown dwarf binary system LP 349-25AB using the GUFI high-speed optical photometer at the Mount Graham Observatory for her M.Sc. 
26. August 2021
Welcome to Rob Ferguson! Rob will be using the I-LOFAR radiotelescope in Birr, Co. Offaly to study the radio emission from several pulsars for his M.Sc. 
17. August 2021
The US Patent Office just issued a patent for our application ‘Host and intestinal microbiota derived metabolomic blood plasma signature for prior radiation injury’ link here. 
29. July 2021
WE WON! Our project, TAPAS (Tracking Adaptation Progress in Agriculture and Food Security Using an AI-powered Satellite Remote Sensing Platform) announced as the winner of the Winner of SFI Future Innovator Prize AI for Societal Good Challenge. 
29. June 2021
Welcome to Amy Ferguson! Amy, who will be based in Professor Charlie Spillane’s lab, will be working on using remote sensing data towards the development of a biomass-based climate adaptation index for agricultural systems - her work is funded by our SFI funded TAPAS project 
30. May 2021
We were awarded 8.9 hours Tier 1 time on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope to study circumpulsar debris disks! 😃 
12. May 2021
Deirdre presented a poster on her high speed photometric study of PSR B0540-69 at the School of Maths Research Day 