Posted 06 June 2010
Royal Irish Academy honours UCD scientists and scholars
In recognition of their outstanding achievements, five UCD academics have been elected to the Royal Irish Academy. “This group is as accomplished and as academically diverse as any cohort elected since our founding members signed the roll in 1785,” said Professor Nicholas Canny, President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA).
Dr Hugh Brady, President of UCD; Dr Caoimhín Breatnach, UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics; Professor Maria Baghramian, UCD School of Philosophy; Professor Da-Wen Sun, UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science, and Veterinary Medicine; and Professor Karl Whelan, UCD School of Economics, were among the 24 academics who achieved the distinction on 28 May 2010 at the Academy’s 225th admission of new members since it was first founded.
During his address, Professor Canny said that the promotion of research within universities must be related to, and integrated with, their teaching mission. He noted that if government funding to support research is predicated to occur only where this funding can ‘be seen to promote innovation, enterprise and immediate job creation, it would be better [to enforce such a model] in stand-alone research institutes rather than through cross-subsidisation from the teaching mission of higher-research institutions’.
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) is Ireland’s premier learned body and vigorously promotes excellence in scholarship, recognises achievements in learning, direct research programmes and undertakes its own research projects, particularly in areas relating to Ireland and its heritage.
Competition for election to membership is keen as it is the highest academic honour in Ireland and a public recognition of the highest academic achievement.
Hugh Brady, President of UCD
Hugh Brady was appointed President of University College Dublin in January 2004. Before returning to UCD in 1996 as Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics, he spent nine years at Harvard University, most recently as Associate Professor of Medicine. In parallel with his academic career at Harvard, he served as Director of the Renal Division of the Brockton/West Roxbury VA Medical Center and Consultant Physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. He is internationally recognised as a medical researcher, specialising in the molecular basis for inflammatory disease and the complications of diabetes.
Maria Baghramian,
UCD School of Philosophy
Maria Baghramian is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at UCD. She is internationally recognised for her research in the philosophy of language and contemporary American philosophy. She is also Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Programme at UCD. Her monograph Relativism Language (2004) is regarded as a definitive contribution to the topic. In addition, her Modern Philosophy of Language has been widely adopted as a textbook in the area and has even been translated into Chinese.
Da-Wen Sun,
UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science, and Veterinary Medicine
Da-Wen Sun holds the chair of Food and Biosystems Engineering at University College Dublin. Thomson Scientific ranks him among the top 1% of authors cited in Agricultural Sciences. His many scholarly works have become standard reference materials for research workers in the areas of computer vision, computational fluid dynamics modelling and vacuum cooling. He is Editor-in-chief of the journal Food and Bioprocess Technology and editor of the series Contemporary Food Engineering.
Caoimhín Breatnach,
UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics
Caoimhín Breatnach is Senior Lecturer in Modern Irish at University College Dublin. He is widely acknowledged as a principal authority in the field of classical Irish philology with a special interest and expertise in all aspects of the transmission and content of early modern political and religious literature. He is a joint editor of the Apocrypha Hiberniae project for the prestigious Corpus Christianorum (Brepols) series.
Karl Whelan,
UCD School of Economics
Karl Whelan is a professor of economics in UCD. He worked for over ten years in central banks, first at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington and then at the Central Bank of Ireland. His research is generally concentrated in applied macroeconomics and has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.
About the Royal Irish Academy
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) is Ireland’s premier learned body and vigorously promotes excellence in scholarship, recognises achievements in learning, direct research programmes and undertakes its own research projects, particularly in areas relating to Ireland and its heritage.
The Academy now has 441 Members across the disciplines of the sciences, humanities and social sciences and in its entire history only 2,833 people have been Members.
In 2009 the following UCD staff were elected; Anne Fuchs, Professor in Modern German Literature and Culture and Professor Stephen Mennell, Professor of Sociology.
Among the Academy’s officers are Professors Tom Brazil, David Fegan and Peter Mitchell.
Competition for election to membership is keen as it is the premiere academic honour in Ireland and a public recognition of the highest academic achievement. Those elected are entitled to use the designation ‘MRIA’ after their name.
(Produced by UCD University Relations)
