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The UCD STEM Challenge Fund
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The UCD STEM Challenge Fund

The UCD STEM Challenge Fund is a joint initiative between the three UCD Colleges of Science, Engineering & Architecture, and Health & Agricultural Sciences to support highly collaborative and high-impact STEM research in UCD.

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Stem Challenge Funding Awardees - College of Engineering & Architecture

Project Lead Proposal Title Co-Investigator(s) Total Awarded
Dr Ronald Halim

When circular bioeconomy meets biomedicine: Harnessing the power of microalgae for brewery waste treatment and omega-3 oil production for therapeutic application.

Eoin Brennan, Jeremy Simpson & Sara Cardoso Esteves

€10000
Dr Recep Kaan Dereli

Enhancing the Performance of Hydrogen-to-Biomethane Process by Using Chemically Engineered Enzyme Cofactors (FeNiX)

Roderick Jones, James Sullivan & Raul Miranda Caso Luengo

€4920
Dr Daniela Boehm

The effect of cold atmospheric plasma on the formation of MSC-derived extra-cellular vesicles

Margaret McGee, Ricardo Simon Carbajo, Polat Goktas, Kieran Brennan & Alfonso Blanco €10000
Dr Nan Zhang

Resolving structure-properties of lipid-based nanomedicines at single nanoparticle level (Resolve-NP)

Brian Rodriguez, Xiulong Bao & Eoin Brennan

€9900
Dr Xiping Wu

Integrated Solar Energy Harvesting and Wireless Communications Solution for Zero-Energy IoT

Chiara Cocco & Jessica Jiang (University of New South Wales)

€5500
Dr Fiona Freeman

Investigate the involvement of the STimulator of Interferon Genes (STING) pathway in the survival of osteosarcoma cells and assess the potential benefits of targeting this pathway to overcome chemores

Gerald Barry

€10000
Dr Jennifer Keenahan

Models to aid site-selection of offshore-wind turbines

Philip Cardiff, James Herterich, Lennon Ó'Náraigh, Mark Coughlan & Miguel Bustamante

€9664
Dr Emer Doheny

Portable device to measure oropharyngeal muscle force.

Jayne Carberry, Eoin O'Cearbhaill & Madeleine Lowery

€15600
Dr Kevin Roche

How does invasive mollusc species' shell strength affect their availability as a food source to fish?

Jan-Robert Baars & Marco Garcia-Vaquero

€5066

Stem Challenge Funding Awardees - College of Health and Agricultural Sciences

Project Lead Proposal Title Co-Investigator(s) Total Awarded
Dr Stephen Thorpe

Development of a pancreatic cancer-on-chip model of immune cell infiltration

Mario Manresa, Nan Zhang & Carlos Matellan

€10000
Dr Clare Reynolds

Weighing in on breast milk bioactives – the impact of breast milk pro-inflammatory bioactives on infant growth and development

Sharleen O'Reilly, Aifric O'Sullivan & Martina Wallace

€15118
Dr Mark Pickering

Accessible solutions for measuring marine microplastics.

Kevin Nolan

€9390
Professor Kate Pumpa

Peak performance wearables: When near enough isn’t good enough.

Stephen Redmond, Polat Goktas, Ricardo Simon Carbajo & Jocelyn Mara (University of Canberra) €19505
Professor James Jones

Perfecting an artificial skin

Dermot Brougham & Aisling Ní Annaidh

€2215
Dr Eoin Brennan

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived human blood vessel organoids as a powerful model to investigate vascular development and disease

John Crean, Jessica Davis & Dermot Brougham

€10000
Dr Simon Hodge

Circles within circles: the response of hemp to a bio-fertilizer derived from insect farming and repurposed food waste

Susanne Schilling & Rainer Melzer

€5000
Dr Stephen Lalor

Developing a workflow to map metatranscriptomic data to metagenomic taxonomical characterisation of the lower airway microbiome to reveal functionally active bacteria in the development of severe asthma

Séamus Fanning & Guerrino Macori

€9264

Stem Challenge Funding Awardees - College of Science

Project Lead Proposal Title Co-Investigator(s) Total Awarded
Dr Jennifer Mitchell

Characterising the motility of Streptococcus gallolyticus, a bloodstream pathogen of colon tumours

Dimitri Scholz, Vladimir Lobaskin & Nan Zhang

€20000
Dr Monica De Gaetano

Nano-formulation of novel Small Synthetic Molecules in Resolution Pharmacology:  an innovative approach to tackle Low-grade Inflammation in Atherosclerosis. 

Eoin Brennan & Nan Zhang

€17000
Dr Irene Hernandez Giron

Phantoms4All_UCD: A quality control framework for 3d printed anthropomorphic test objects for medical imaging devices assessment

Saoirse Tracy, Denis Dowling & Sean Cournane €20000
Dr Derek Costello

Explore the therapeutic potential of seaweed extracts for Alzheimer's disease-related neurodegeneration 

Cormac Murphy, Alison Reynolds &  Micheal MacMonagail

€9900
Assoc Professor James Rice

Green tech to address persistent environmental contaminants

Veronica Sofianos & Marcus Baumann

€10000
Dr Marco Viola

Efficient training algorithms for deep learning on traditional and neuromorphic architectures

Arjun Pakrashi & Vikram Pakrashi

€4200
Dr Joseph Byrne

Rigid fluorescent boronic-acid peptide probes as novel potential tools to visualise changing glycosylation within the Golgi apparatus

Aniello Palma, Jeremy Simpson & Hannah Crory

€7000

UCD College of Engineering and Architecture

Room 122 & Room 126, UCD Engineering and Materials Science Centre, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
T: +353 1 716 1868 | E: eng.arch@ucd.ie