September Twenty-nine University of Galway research projects receive Government funding

University of Galway has been awarded funding for 29 postgraduate scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships under the Irish Research Council’s flagship Government of Ireland programmes.

The successful projects were announced by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris T.D., as part of a €24.6m funding investment to support rising researchers and pioneering projects. 

The IRC’s Government of Ireland scheme supports top early-career researchers who are based in Ireland’s higher education and research institutions. 

The University of Galway projects, which included 19 scholarships and 10 fellowships, will conduct research on a wide range of topics, including:

• An investigation into technology-facilitated sexual violence and emergent violence against women
• The protection of irregular migrants in immediate return cases
• What factors impact on Irish post-primary teachers’ understandings of intercultural education?
• Risk factors and blood biomarkers for preclinical dementia
• Investigating chromosome segregation and fertility in Drosophila male germline
• Fingerprinting abrupt climate change in the West of Ireland
• Assessing the socio-cultural effects of noise from offshore windfarms on coastal soundscapes
• Biomaterial enhanced cellular brain repair for Parkinson's disease

Professor Jim Livesey, Vice-President Research and Innovation at University of Galway, said: “I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to our postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers for their innovative projects. I have no doubt that our talented group of 29 postgraduate scholars and postdoctoral fellows will contribute greatly to critical societal needs through their multi-disciplinary research that will have a positive impact across all sectors of society.”

Three of the projects awarded scholarships are made in collaboration with and funded by partner agencies including Environmental Protection Agency and Met Éireann.

Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme awardees and projects from University of Galway include: 

• Audrey Walsh  - Women, Natural Sciences and Art in Nineteenth Century Ireland’s Botanical Heritage                                       
• Clara Bosch March - The protection of irregular migrants in immediate return cases: the judicial dialogue around Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 ECHR between the European Court of Human Rights, Spain and Italy 
• Federica Brescia - Gold(III)-glycoconjugates as antiviral agents against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2): from rational design to biological evaluations 
• Francesca McDonagh - Oral colonisation with pathobionts amongst patients with a diagnosis of treatment resistant schizophrenia. 
• Gregory Harris - What factors impact on Irish post-primary teachers’ understandings of intercultural education?
• Lorraine Hayman - Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: A Multi-Site Case Study in Ireland of Emergent Violence Against Women 
• Maria Redmond - Investigation of the endocannabinoid system as a novel therapeutic target for anxiety, depression and impaired cognition associated with chronic wounds 
• Martin Mulligan - Risk factors and blood biomarkers for preclinical dementia
• Moman Khan – Generating the Haploid inducer line in perennial ryegrass using
• CRISPR/Cas9, targeting the MATL gene
• Nazanin Fereidouni - A systematic study on the structure-property relationships of multi-component pharmaceutical materials 
• Oliver Brockmann - Operationalising Critical Pedagogy in Irish and German Social Work Classrooms: An International Comparative Ethnographic Study
• Paris Weavers - Mechanisms of Senescence-Induced Somatic Cell Reprogramming
• Rachel Keegan - Investigating chromosome segregation and fertility in Drosophila male germline
• Saoirse Ryan - Biomaterial enhanced cellular brain repair for Parkinson's disease 
• Shauna Mulligan - Wartime Slavery and Race in the United States and Nazi Germany during the 1860s and 1940s: A Comparison of Robert Allston’s Chicora Wood Plantation in South Carolina (1861-1865) with Hans Aumeier’s Klooga Concentration Camp in Nazi Estonia (1941-1945)
• Sofiia Tretiak - Optimization the existing and developing novel techniques for the extraction and separation of the seaweed-derived polysaccharides and polyphenols
• Christopher Stewart, in collaboration with Met Éireann - Fingerprinting abrupt climate change in the West of Ireland: A high-resolution timeline of deglaciation and landscape evolution in West Mayo
• Eugene McKeown, in collaboration with Environmental Protection Agency - Assessing the socio-cultural effects of noise from offshore windfarms on coastal soundscapes
• Garreth Gibney, in collaboration with Environmental Protection Agency - Climate Change, Health Outcomes and Adaptation: A micro-econometric analysis of factors mediating the health impacts of extreme temperatures in a temperate climate and implications for health inequalities under various climate change scenarios. 

Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme awardees and projects from University of Galway include: 

• Amir Abdo - Reactive oxygen and nitrogen species-shielding and carbon monoxide  generating microgels for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer
• Christian Schweizer - Dicuil – an Irish and Carolingian Universalist and his Intellectual Legacy (DICUIL)
• Christopher McCann - Ag seinm a rúnphort/Playing his secret tune: Music in the fiction of Máirtín Ó Cadhain
• Clíona de Bhailís - Exploring young people who use non-traditional communication opportunities to access supported decision making under the Assisted Decision Making Capacity Act 2015
• Ilze Skujina - First in vitro comparison of time-dependant DNA damage response in short-lived Molossus molossus and long-lived Myotis myotis bat fibroblasts to ionizing radiation exposure and comparison to model organisms
• Lara Rodríguez Outeirino - Therapeutic modulation of miR-106b-5p in muscle stem cells in ageing and motor neuron disease
• Omnia Zayed - Glór: A Holistic Approach to Social Media Language Analysis
• Patrick Mahoney - Cowboys, Colonialism and Ceol Tíre: Consuming American Western Culture in Ireland since 1922
• Shaima Magdaline - Modelling Shear Shock Waves in the Brain with Machine Learning
• Sogol Moradian - State-of-the-art early-warning flood prediction system for Ireland: design, implementation and computational modules

For more information about the Irish Research Council, visit www.research.ie.

Ends