4 May

The Gene Hunter: Dr Aoife McLysaght, TCD

Posted by seanduke in CAREERS, FEATURES, GENETICS, SCIENCE SPIN. Tagged: , , , .


TEDx Dublin 2012

Aoife McLysaght speakingat the TEDx event in Dublin in 2012 [Credit: Science Gallery]

In World War 11 the RAF hired a statistician called Abraham Wald to analyse planes returning from air combat. Metal was scarce, and the idea was to only re-inforce the most vulnerable parts of the planes. The parts of returning aircraft that made it home full of bullets must be the toughest parts, Wald reasoned, and so a decision was made not to re-inforce these areas, but to use the scarce metal to strenghten the other parts of the aircraft.

Dr Aoife McLysaght, geneticist at TCD, understands Wald’s logic and applies it to her own gene hunting efforts. Dr McLysaght  is identifying genes that are most sensitive to being hit with ‘bullets’ – which in genetic terms means being hit with random gene mutations. This is important because it is known that in certain sensitive genes – right across all living species – having too many copies of a particular gene, or too few, can result in a disease.

School

Dubliner, Aoife, attended her local national school before attending St Andrew’s College, on Booterstown Avenue. She recalled that she although there wasn’t too much science taught in primary school, she was very interested and engaged by such science as was on offer. In particular, Aoife remembers presenting a science project with her best friend in sixth class, which involved explaining aspects of the weather to other pupils and teachers.

“I had fun little demonstrations, to do with the power of wind and air,” Aoife recalled. “We had a plastic bag with a book on top of it. We got the opening of the bag and blew into it and showed that it would lift the book. We also had a glass milk bottle, with a baloon on top that was not inflated. We placed the bottle into a jug of really hot water, and the air would expand and inflate the baloon. I remember have loads of fun doing that,” she said.

Her interest in science was strongly established by the time she attended St Andrews. She remembers that she was always engaged with science, and actively listened to the teachers, so that information went in, making life much easier when it came to passing the exams. When the leaving certificate rolled around Aoife chose to do Biology and Chemistry, but not Physics. She believes that was a mistake in hindsight as she always enjoyed physics.

Instead she chose to study geography, because it was regarded as a science subject by the universities. This was a mistake, she says now, because while she enjoyed physical geography – such as explanations of why earthquakes occur – she did not at all like social geography, which for her involved too much memorising of lots of very dull information. Her experience has told her in the years since, that people will succeed at what they enjoy. That was proven when her geography result proved her worst leaving certificate result.

At St. Andrews, she was inspired by the efforts of a great teacher, Dr Nick Frewin, a PhD holder, who taught her science and biology. “He was just really good,” recalled Aoife. “He spent a lot of time clearly explaining things, had well planned lessons, and there was a lot in it beyond the course. He was well liked enough for people to write him letters when he was retiring. When I did genetics, there was a class of 12 people, and three of those have been his [Dr Frewin] students, and [in] the year behind me we had another one,” said Aoife.

The role of the teacher is crucial, says Aoife, and she cited the example of the many people that say they can’t do maths. “The number of people who think they can’t do maths is too high – there are a lot of people that have been put off maths. They stop trying because they think they can’t do maths. The students underestimate their own abilities. Students should allowed have a bit of fun with maths. Games and puzzles for example,” said Aoife.

Recently, Aoife recieved a prestigious European Research Council grant – which are only given to the top tier of scientists in Europe – to try and identify disease causing genes. The aim she said is identify those genes that are vulnerable to changes in quantity. This might involve a reduction in the copies of genes, or too many copies. There is a certain amount of variation in the number of copies of genes between people, and it’s common. However, in some people in certain genes variations in gene quantities increase disease vulnerability.

This is an evolutionary approach to genetics, explained Aoife. The goal is to see which genes have tolerated changes in amount – high or low – over evolutionary time and which have not. The identification of those genes that have proven intolerant to change over evolution can provide a key to which genes are linked to disease today, the reasoning goes. “There is variation in [[gene] copies, because mutations happen,” explained Aoife. “DNA is a chemical that copies itself in cell division, and this is an easy mistake that happens a lot.”

Once the sensitive genes that have been linked to disease have been clearly identified, then it becomes possible to develop better and more precise ways to diagnose disease. Following on from that, if there are improved methods to diagnose disease at an earlier stage, then it should become possible for scientists to develop better disease treatments and therapies.

Communicator

Aoife is also one of the best scientist-communicators in Ireland, and is regularly invited to speak in schools and at public lectures about her work and its implications for society. She believes that it is important that some scientists communicate with the public, but she also acknowledges that although she enjoys this activity, not every scientist will feel the same.

“It is important that some of us do it, and there is support for that. I mean that it is recognised as a valid part of the job. A valid activity, that it is respected. Sometimes people might think it is a trivial activity. I don’t think that. I see science as part of our culture, we should all have access to that. A lot of people love music, but don’t have the intention of being a musician. It’s the same with science – people should have access to it,” she said.

For Aoife, science is about the ability to learn, to deduce, to understand something, even when it is not visible to the naked eye. It involves being able to think long-term, beyond our own lives. Science is exciting, interesting, dynamic, but it is a big mistake to try and push it onto people. It is also a mistake, she believes, for the Irish government, or any government to get too closely involved in deciding how funding for science should be spent. It would be better to fund the best people than to fund certain areas, she said.

She has some advice for young people that might be considering science as a career. “When I was young, I didn’t know you could be a scientist, I didn’t know any scientists. I didn’t know what I would end up being, if I studied science. My mum said to me, do what you enjoy the the job will follow. It’s very optimistic, but I kind of subscribe to that,” she said.

This article was first published in Science Spin, May-June 2013 issue.

1 Apr

Gay people in Ireland seven times more likely to attempt suicide

Posted by seanduke in MENTAL HEALTH, PUBLIC HEALTH, THE SUNDAY TIMES. Tagged: , , , , , .


Gay Suicide Risk

Gay people in Ireland have a tenfold risk of self-harm behaviours (Credit: Adam Lau)

Gay people in Ireland are seven times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexuals, according to new research by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Professor Mary Cannon, a psychiatrist, who led the study, said the “striking” finding was a link between sexual orientation and mental ill health.

A hugely elevated risk of mood disorder, self harm and attempted suicide was found among lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) youth when Cannon’s team followed up a study started in 2001. “We know people who engage in suicide attempts and plans are at greater risk later from suicide,” said Cannon.

In 2001, 212 students aged 13-15 were randomly selected at several northside Dublin schools in a study to assess levels of mental disorder. About 80% agreed to take part in the recent follow-up survey.

About 6% identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. The study found the mental health of this group was far worse than that of heterosexual peers.

“There were high rates of depression and about 50% had engaged in an act of deliberate self harm, such as minor cutting and overdoses, compared with less than 20% for the rest,” said Cannon. “It appears if you are of minority sexual orientation you are at a tenfold risk of self-harm behaviours.”

The reason is unclear, although there is evidence that being part of a minority group suffering discrimination is itself stressful. Cannon said research by the National Suicide Research Foundation indicates young people with worries about their sexual orientation and who were bullied had higher rates of self-harm. The disapproval of family members may also be a factor.

“They [the LGBT group] seem to have more problems in the family environment,” Cannon said. “Those who are working seem to be having some difficulties with colleagues. I think a lot of it is to do with these young people just not fitting into their environment.

Odhran Allen, director of mental health in the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network also described the findings as striking. Other research shows the experience of being LGBT in Ireland can have a negative impact on mental health, he said. “When LGBT people experience a number of stressful situations, such as fear of coming out, lack of support after coming out, harassment in their communities, or homophobic bullying, this increases their risk of self-harm and suicide,” he said.

Cannon and her team are now planning to look at other risk factors for self-harm and suicide attempts and to rank them. “My hunch would be that being of a minority sexual orientation may be quite high up the list,” she said.

Michael Barron, executive director of BeLonG To, a service for LGBT young people called the findings worrying. He said: “It is so important that families and communities understand that bullying and prejudice, far from being part of growing up, at putting young people’s lives at risk”

This article appeared first in The Sunday Times, Irish edition, 31/03/2013

14 Mar

Boredom – It really is a killer!

Posted by seanduke in HUMAN BEHAVIOUR, NEUROSCIENCE, PUBLIC HEALTH, RADIO, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .


The boredom of this Moscow street seller could be very bad for her health [Credit: Wikipedia]

The boredom of this Moscow street seller could be very bad for her health [Credit: Wikipedia]

Boredom in work, or at home, is quite literally a killer, according to a growing body of evidence linking it with serious health effects.

The science of boredom is proving very interesting indeed to many researchers around the world, including at least one here in Ireland.

Dr Wijnand van Tilburg, a psychology lecturer in the University of Limerick is interested in how boredom affects aggression and memory.

There are serious consequences for people’s health if they are bored, with studies linking boredom to a greater vulnerability to heart disease, depression, overeating, alcohol and drug abuse, and gambling.

The definition of boredom is different to different people, but it is widely induced in people that must do repetitive tasks, and suffer time delays, such as tedious factory work, or waiting at an airport for a long delayed airplane.

Researchers set up boredom experiments, but inducing the condition in subjects – typically university students. One team showed students a video of people hanging laundry washing, and this worked very well.

Given the range of ill health effect caused by boredom it is important to avoid it as much as possible. This might involve seeing the big picture of boring tasks, and linking them to a great good, or achievement, such as a teacher that is bored correcting homework, but sees it as good for pupils.

It is also possible to reduce boredom by taking exercise, such as walking or going for a job. It is important too, to try, when possible, to work in a job that its well suited to a person’s interests and abilities.

Click below to hear more:

Science of Boredom: Discussed on the Morning Show with Declan Meehan on East Coast FM. [Broadcast 14th March 2013]

4 Mar

The ‘Nano’ Tester: Professor Stefano Sanvito, CRANN

Posted by seanduke in CAREERS, MATERIALS, NANOTECHNOLOGY. Tagged: , , , , .


Professor Stefano Sanvito, Deputy Director of CRANN, pictured here in the Long Library at TCD

Professor Stefano Sanvito, Deputy Director of CRANN, pictured here in the Long Library at TCD [Credit: CRANN]

Lighter, stronger, more fuel-efficient airplanes; more powerful, better targeted drugs, and paper thin high-definition televisions – it has all become possible as scientists became adept at the manipulation of tiny ‘nano’ particles. The possibilities from nanotechnology are exciting, but it crucial that proper safety tests are in place. Professor Stefano Sanvito, Deputy Director of CRANN at TCD, wants Ireland to become a ‘hub’ for such nano testing.

Stefano, as the name suggests, is Italian, and graduated in physics from the University of Milan ‘about 15 years ago’. He was interested in science from when he was ‘very small’, and he has pedigree for the field. His father, who is now retired, was an engineer who worked in the sewing machine industry, while his grandfather worked in R&D for ‘big pharma’.

His interests, while at secondary school, were not only in the sciences, as he also developed a liking for philosophy. In fact, his first choice of career was to become a writer, and towards that end, he applied to study at the renowned Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The standards for entry to the Scuola were, and are, high, with only about 6% of applicants gaining entry. Stefano didn’t make it, and then focused on his other big interest – physics.

He gained entry to the University of Milan to study physics and maths, but that was easy part. Though some 500 fellow students were also admitted at the same time, only about 50 of them would later pass the exams at the end of the year and make it into second year. It was a brutal ‘sink or swim’ test for the mainly teenage group of students. Stefano recalled that there was no help provided, no structure for students, and the pressure was immense.

He found the going extremely tough, especially the lab work, yet he passed his exams. That first year in college wasn’t at all enjoyable, as the work needed to get into the top 10% of the class was huge, while most of the physics course was of the ‘old school’ variety. It wasn’t until 3rd year, when began studying modern physics, and areas such as quantum mechanics, that things began to get interesting for him, and his talent found expression.

He doesn’t recall any event in particular that triggered a flourishing of interest in science at any stage of his life, but he did have a mentor, while at university that was a big influence on him. This was his fourth year supervisor, who oversaw his final year undergraduate project. He was a difficult man to deal with on a personal level, recalled Stefano, but he was a stimulating character and a talented high-energy scientist. Certainly, he might well have been a difficult colleague, said Stefano, but as a supervisor and scientist, he was fantastic. He also gathered around him many big names of science, which made things even better.

The final university year was an enjoyable experience thanks to his colourful, difficult supervisor. Then, with his degree in his pocket, he looked around for his next option. He wanted to continue in research, and do a PhD, but he wanted to do it outside Italy, and preferably in an English-speaking country. He chose to go to the UK, where he secured support from the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) to study ‘giant magneto-resistance’.

Military matters

The force called giant magneto-resistance was discovered in 1988 – independently, yet at the same time – by research groups led by Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg. The two men were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2007 for the finding. The term describes how the resistance of certain materials to electrical current drops dramatically as a magnetic field is applied. The word ‘giant’ was tagged on to ‘magneto-resistance’ part because the scientists wanted to describe something that was a much larger effect on current than anything that had ever been seen in metals. This giant magneto force has since been used to improve the storage capacity of computer disks, car sensors, and many other devices.

The MOD wanted to use giant magneto-resistance forces to develop a new ‘solid state’ compass, and that’s why they funded Stefano’s PhD into this area. A solid state compass is a small compass found now in clocks or mobile phones that are typically built using two or three ‘magnetic field sensors’ that pick up the Earth’s magnetic readings, and send that data to a microprocessor. They can provide a very accurate positioning method.

Stefano’s PhD was awarded by the University of Lancaster, but he spent two out of three years working towards his doctorate based at an MOD site near Malvern, Worcestershire, a town of about 28,000 people located approximately halfway between Birmingham and Bristol. This site was home to the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, the group that had famously developed the radar, which helped the RAF win its life or death struggle with the Luftwaffe in the 1940 ‘Battle of Britain’. The group had moved from the south of England to Malvern in 1942, where they worked under the protection of the 600-metre tall Malvern Hills. The British had, by 1942, become concerned about the threat of a ballistic missile attack on its military bases in southern England from Nazi- Occupied Belgium.

At Malvern, Stefano did ‘atomistic simulations’ for ‘sandwiches’ of different materials. In other words he analysed how magnetic affected current running through various materials. It was possible to get a different current in a material when the magnetic ‘configuration’ changed. This Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 was awarded to Fert and Grunburg for being the first to demonstrate that an electrical current could be hugely changed by changing the magnetism of a magnet. This knowledge was used to build improved computer disk drives, and today every computer or disk drive is based on this principle, in a market worth $ 7 billion. It’s an example, said Stefano, of how basic research can lead to economic gains.

American dream

After his stint in Britain, Stefano was very keen to follow a long held dream to work as a scientist in the USA. He felt the best time to do that was after the PhD, and as a post-doctoral researcher. “There is excellent science in Europe, but there is a ‘can do’ attitude in the US that has no match anywhere in the world – maybe Israel – and I wanted to see that in action,” said Stefano. He applied and was accepted to do research at the ‘top 10’ listed University of Southern California Santa Barbara, and found it “the absolute best place”.

He found the scientific culture to be fantastic, the climate was superb, the mountains and sea were nearby, he was mingling with Nobel Prize winners – USC Santa Barbara had three winners in his few short years there alone – and his office was 100 metres from the beach. He spent two and a half years living out his California dream and while in the lab he was working on putting magnetic impurities into semi-conductors and seeing what happened.

Ireland calling

California would be hard to top, but his next move was crucial, as, after the post-doc Stefano was seeking his first staff job as a scientist. He researched the options, and saw an ad for an opportunity to work at the CRANN Institute at TCD in Dublin where he knew a renowned researcher was based – Professor Michael Coey. The package was attractive in terms of equipment, funding and personnel resources. The couple were keen too, to return to Europe, any part of Europe, in order to raise their family. Ireland seemed a good bet.

In 2006, Stefano and his wife, and two boys moved to Dublin, where he was appointed as Associate Professor in Physics, later becoming Deputy Director of CRANN in 2009. He began working closely with Professor Coey, but set up his own research group. Stefano’s group was focused on investigating the properties of nano materials. More and more companies were making nano-devices, and using nano-materials, and he developed a testing service, based on unique mathematical algorithms built into simulation software programmes, which are available to download, for companies located all over the globe.

“I have to admit that I moved to Ireland because of serpendity,” said Stefano, who is now well settled here with his family. “I wanted to move back to Europe, and my position at Trinity was the first one I could secure. However, I probably wouldn’t have moved to any other place in Ireland except Trinity because of the reputation. A second factor to steer my decision was SFI [Science Foundation Ireland]. SFI essentially started those days and it was clear that they could provide great opportunities for young scientists. I am afraid that this is not the case any longer,” added Stefano.

Ireland had a good reputation in science when Stefano arrived here seven years ago, but he said hard won reputations can be easily lost. “What really differentiate good and bad places academically is the reputation. Of course other things matter, but the reputation of a place, or your colleagues, of the commitment of the state and the society is what makes a University attractive. It takes ages to construct a reputation, and it takes very little to lose it.”

Future

As for the future, Stefano belives that nano researchers will become increasingly able to systematically predict new materials and new material complexes ahead of experiments. Nano science will not stop there, of course, and be believes the next stage after that will involve researchers making predictions about materials with applications in mind. For example, scientists might predict a new material – that does not yet exist – for making magnets that can be used in electrical moters. Then people will make it in the laboratory. These new materials will be predicted and designed using computers, and new software.

This means an age of vastly superior new materials – designed exactly for purpose – lies ahead of us. Tehse new materials will need to be tested before they can be applied in the real world. CRANN is already known for its ability to simulate tests on nanomaterials, and Stefano wants to extend that expertise to a range of new nanomaterials coming online. This can help manufacturers by proving whether certain nano materials are really up to scratch, whether they will work in nano-devices, while also assuring the public about ‘nano safety’.

First published in the March 2013 edition of Science Spin.

4 Mar

UCD team break cryptography world record

Posted by seanduke in INTERNET, MATHEMATICS, THE SUNDAY TIMES. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .


Online security may have to be reviewed after a UCD team broke the world record for solving a famously hard problem used for encryption. Credit [www.geekersmagazine.com]

Online security may have to be reviewed after a UCD team broke the world record for solving a famously hard problem used for encryption. Credit [www.geekersmagazine.com]

A team of mathematicians from University College Dublin (UCD) has set a world record by breaking the code used by the security industry to protect credit cards and bank account details online.

Using a supercomputer provided by the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), the research team from UCD’s Claude Shannon Institute solved a famously difficult conundrum known as the discrete log problem.

To perform secure transactions online, mathematicians create algorithms using numbers stretching to hundreds of digits. These numbers must be large enough to prevent decryption by criminals, but small enough not to slow down transactions, which should take place instantenously.

As part of the process, the Dublin-based research team, led by Professor Gary McGuire, broke the world record last week, previously held by mathematicians in France, by solving the discrete log problem using a 1,971 bit number. The largest number previously used to solve it was a 1,425 bit number.

McGuire, from the School of Mathematical Sciences in UCD, said secure online transactions were now reliant on the discrete log problem or its variations. Most use codes based on numbers larger than the highest number ever to be decrypted but not so large as to slow down transactions.

“Online banking, buying something on Amazon or your airline tickets – any secure website that you put your credit card in [is based on it],” he said. The problem is also used to secure e-voting machines around the world.

Michael Scott, chief cryptographer with CertiVox, an online security firm, said the achievement woudl force his industry to review security levels.

“All of our security depends on variations of the discrete logarithm problem, so if the problem isn’t as hard as we thought it was, then that could be a bit of a worry,” he said.

Scott said the UCD team’s success in cracking such a “tough nut” had been noted by those interested in cryptography. “Out in the cryptographic blogosphere people are talking about it – people are impressed,” he said.

The record for the biggest number used to solve the problem was set at 127 bits by Don Coppersmith from IBM in America in 1984. It has since been broken several times, with French researchers vying with each other and a Japanese team from Fujitsu, until the Irish triumph last week. The UCD team is making plans to break its own record.

McGuire decided to tackle the problem after reading about the Japanese world record last summer. He gathered a team of post-doctoral researchers, made up of Dr Robert Granger from England, Dr Jens Zumbragel from Germany and Dr Frank Gologlu from Turkey for the record attempt, and Science Foundation Ireland provided the funding. The team applied to ICHEC to use its supercomputer and created a mathematical formula to solve the problem.

Measured in bits – the most basic units of computer calculation – their record stands at 1,971 bits. In layman’s terms the number is 594 digits long.

McGuire said their formula meant they should be able to break their own record, given time. “We can push things on quite a bit,” he said.

“Over the next month we hope to go up to 4,000 bits. That would never have been imagined a year ago.”

World records

1984, Don Coppersmith (IBM), USA, 127 bits

1992, Daniel Gordon (Google), Kevin McCurley (Georgia IT), USA, 401 bits

1998, Damien Weber, Thomas Denny, (Universitat des Saarlandes) Germany, 512 bits

2001, Antoine Joux (Ecole Normale Supérieure), Reynald Lercier (Université de Rennes), France, 521 bits

2004 Emmanuel Thomé (Institute National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique), France, 607 bits

2005, Antoine Joux, Reynald Lercier, France, 613 bits

2012, Fujitsu, Kyushu University, National Institue for Information and Communications Technology, Japan, 934 bits

2013, Antoine Joux, Frances, 1,425 bits

2013, Gary McGuire, Faruk Gologlu, Rogert Granger, Jens Zumbragel (UCD), Ireland, 1,971 bits

First published in The Sunday Times, Irish Edition, 3rd March 2013

23 Jan

The Energy Saver: Jean Malone, Siemens Ireland

Posted by seanduke in CAREERS, ENGINEERING, RENEWABLE ENERGY. Tagged: , , , .


Jean Malone, pictured above, has found career success at Siemens Ireland as Manager of its Dublin-based Energy Centre

As fuel costs rise, industry must find ways to reduce its energy costs in the short-term and introduce efficiencies that protect it against future price hikes. The Energy Centre at Siemens Ireland is helping customers all over the world – from Cork to China – to do that, and heading up this operation is TCD engineering graduate Jean Malone (2006).

The Centre in Ireland is set to be at the heart of Siemens’ strategy to be a strong local partner to its customers by providing energy savings for them despite the relentless rise in fuel costs as the demand for fuel increases, and the taxes on their use – greenhouse gas taxes – likewise increase. At the heart of this is Jean Malone and she is proud of what’s been achieved so far for Ireland.

‘We are gearing up at the moment.” said an excited Jean. “Our system can handle a couple of hundred customers right now, but we are planning to add around 1,000 new customers per year.” Siemens Ireland is engaging with local branches of Siemens in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Italy, Holland, Portugal as well as Germany, and as far away as Chengdu in China, to help a new manufacturing plant.

‘Human’ engineering

Jean, who is from Clane in Co Kildare, recalls loving maths, technical graphics and all the technical subjects when she was in secondary school. She was specifically drawn to the medical device sector, as it combined engineering with some direct human benefits. However, after her Leaving Certificate in 2001, she decided that it would be best to select a general engineering course to begin with, and she chose engineering at TCD.

She enjoyed college life at TCD, but after Jean completed her second year, she began to have some doubts as to whether engineering had been a good idea. “The course was tough, but rewarding – but I couldn’t foresee what my future job or career would be like,” recalled Jean. “I wasn’t sure if it was right for me – and I took a year out between 3rd and 4th year.” She needed some time and space to go travel, and figure out exactly what she wanted to do. Her parents were okay, she said, but wanted her to do work experience, for at least part of the time she was out of college. She agreed to do that.

Jean applied, and was accepted to do six weeks of work experience at a company called Chiroxia, based at Citywest, which had been set up by Jim Coleman, a vascular surgeon, who had returned from the US full of ideas for various kinds of medical devices. The company employed engineers to realize Coleman’s vision. It was an exciting place to work, and Jean immediately felt at home there, and enjoyed her work immensely.

Her profile at the company increased when she observed a particular behavior of a substance – at high and low temperatures – that was being prepared for insertion into the human body, which hadn’t been observed by any of the full time engineers at Chiroxia. This was a technical breakthrough for the company, which led to some design changes.

Jean was offered a nine-month contract, which she accepted. In that time she applied knowledge that she had learned in her first three years of college. This work experience changed everything, and any doubts she had about a career in engineering disappeared. “I went back to do my final year full of energy. I was so excited about the topic when I got back, and it completely changed how I viewed the course as well,” said Jean.

Crash response

When the Irish property market crashed ‘almost overnight’ the Irish arm of Siemens AG – the massive engineering and electronics corporation, headquartered in Munich, and employing 370,000 people in some 190 countries – started to look at how existing, or old buildings could be improved or upgraded, as the ‘new build’ market had evaporated.

Siemens put a toe in this market when they developed an energy efficiency plan for a large Ireland-based customer. The idea was to conduct a complete ‘audit’ of the energy usage at the customer’s manufacturing plant. This was done by strategically placing energy meters at key locations in the production plant, and gathering a data stream. That data was then  looked at by a team of energy engineers at Siemens Ireland, who made recommendations to the customer on how to improve energy efficiency.

Siemens Ireland decided to set up an Energy Centre locally, so that this large customer could go online at any stage and look at how it was consuming energy. Once the Centre was up and running, it made sense to offer similar services to other companies base in Ireland.  Eventually, what had started as a local R&D project attracted the interest of Siemens HQ in Germany, who have supported the development of the Centre to provide energy efficiency services for its customers across Europe and beyond.

Success at Siemens

Jean completed her degree at TCD in 2006. After that she worked briefly as a waitress in Belfast before returning home to Co Kildare, where she lived again with her parents for a short time and got a temporary position with Green Isle Foods in Naas. She was glad to be back home, but was keen for a job that would allow her to live more independently.

She started to look for work in Dublin, and an opportunity came up with Siemens. Initially, her job involved working with customers to identify the exact product that they required; to help them find the right product, and the correct complementary products. The idea was to refer customers to websites and give them the skills and knowledge to be able to source new parts themselves.  She did that successfully and then moved on.

The next role was more interesting, as it involved working with a customer to develop an energy efficiency solution. First, Jean worked with a sales person to design a solution suited to the customer’s energy needs, then she worked with a project manager who would roll out the solution for them. It was a challenging, diverse and interesting job.

It also helped Jean’s career and she was offered the role of Siemens Energy Centre Manager. In this role she deals with some very large customers in Ireland, in energy intensive sectors such as pharma, chemicals, food and leisure. The Irish Centre is also responsible for meeting the energy needs of Siemens’ customers based in Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as a growing number of customers across Europe and beyond.

“I enjoy the diversity of the role, each site different challenges, and you have to adapt to those challenges,” said Jean. “Within Siemens there are so many different opportunities. I do enjoy the idea of working towards something that will create more jobs for engineers in Ireland. We have a plan to expand and we have just taken on 4 new people recently under the Job Bridge scheme,” she added.

This article was first published in Science Spin, Issue 56, January-February 2013

1 Nov

Chemical differences when men and women argue

Posted by seanduke in HUMAN BEHAVIOUR, MENTAL HEALTH, RADIO, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .


Men and women react differently – chemically – during an argument and during the aftermath ‘cooling down’ period. [Credit: Forbes.com]

A body of scientific evidence shows that men and women differ – chemically – when it comes to arguments between couples.

For example, a Pennsylvania State University  study, which measured the level of stress hormone, cortisol, found significant differences between arguing men and women.

The levels of cortisol in men were linked with the level of hostility in an argument, while in women, the stress levels were often the result of  a perceived ‘lack of engagement’ by men in the issue at hand.

The scientists asked the couples to discuss disputed issues between them, such as finances, or housecare, and them took saliva samples before and after they argued.

Men took longer to recover chemically and get back to normal cortisol levels than women after a particularly hostile argument.

The scientists theorised that women recovered quicker from such hostile arguments because they at least felt that issues had been aired and weren’t being ignored.

Another study by the University of Minnesota found a link between how good people are at ‘cooling down’ from an argument, and early childhood experience.

The Minnesota researchers found that individuals with a strong bond with their caregiver aged 12 to 18 months were better able to recover following an argument, move on, and not be left ruminating and angry – whether they were men or women.

When it comes to stress, and coping with it; it seems the blueprint is laid down early.

LISTEN: Interview with Declan Meehan 1 Nov ’12  on East Coast FM

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