The National Centre for Isotope Geochemistry was set up in January 2009 and is located within UCD School of Geological Sciences, College of Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The centre facilitates inter-disciplinary research by academics from UCD, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and University College Cork (UCC) as well as international collaborators, who share an interest in radiogenic and heavy stable isotope geochemistry.
The Centre’s instrumentation was initially funded through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) equipment awards to a consortium of applicants from UCD, UCC and TCD. Additional funding was provided by SFI, the Higher Education Authority, Environmental Protection Agency, UCD (President, College of EMPS, UCD School of Geological Sciences, UCD School of Physics, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science), Trinity College Dublin (Department of Geology) and University College Cork (Department of Geology). To date, the total investment in capital equipment amounts to €1.8M. This has led to the establishment of a world-class analytical facility comprising a multiple collector thermal ionisation mass spectrometer (Thermo Scientific Triton) and a high-resolution multiple collector inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer (Thermo Scientific Neptune), equipped for in situ laser-ablation micro-sampling as well as clean labs and other preparation facilities.
The Centre supports the research of three of the School’s research groups – viz. Geochronology, Petrology and Isotope Geochemistry, Marine and Petroleum Geology and Palaeoclimatology and also contributes significantly to the capacity of UCD’s Earth Sciences Institute, specifically to its Earth Systems and Energy Supply themes.
