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UCD Science Shadowing Day

Leaving Certificate students were welcomed to UCD on Wednesday, 3rd February for a science shadowing day. 27 students from schools in Dublin, Navan, Belgium, Kilkenny, Cork and Wicklow spent the day with UCD undergraduate students and researchers. After a morning attending lectures with UCD Science students, they were split up into smaller groups to meet UCD researchers.

Some of the students visited the Nanoscale Function Group based in the UCD Conway Institute. Lead by Professor Suzi Jarvis, the group's research is mainly focused on the application of novel atomic force microscopy (AFM) instrumentation and techniques to find solutions for biomedical problems, at both the cellular and molecular scale. The principle measurement tool used by the group is the atomic force microscope (AFM) and the students were introduced to a number of group-specific research topics, in a series of laboratory and instrument demonstrations.

Two students also met with the Head of Neuroscience Dr John O’Connor from the UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science for a tour of the UCD Conway Institute.

“The students were very impressed by our core facilities and that we actually work with a number of animals in the building, including frogs and zebra fish!” said Dr O’Connor. “I showed them some isolated animal brain tissue where we were recording electrical signals from specific groups of cells and explained to them that this is a great way to study the brain and the problems that we see every day in our lives, including Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease.”

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