Theme: Contemplation

Following the success of our TEDxUCD events held annually since 2013, UCD Research and Innovation is delighted to announce that TEDxUCD 2016 will take place on Friday, 9 December (10 am - 4 pm) in the UCD Dramsoc Theatre in the UCD Student Centre. Our TEDxUCD 2016 event will feature exceptional talks and performances from members of the wider UCD community including staff, students, alumni and friends.

UCD DramaSoc Theatre
University College Dublin
Dublin 4, Dublin, Dublin 4
Ireland

Andrew Hogan

Dr Andrew Hogan is the senior scientist with the obesity immunology research group based in St. Vincent’s University Hospital and a research scientist at UCD’s School of Medicine.

Andrew is very passionate about childhood obesity and is keen to raise awareness of the problem and the imperative for prevention. His research focuses on the impact of obesity on the immune system and the role of the immune system in controlling bodyweight. In 2009 he was awarded a Newman Fellowship with the Obesity Immunology Research Group to investigate the impact of obesity on the immune system. In 2012 Andrew received a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Children’s Research Centre to investigate if childhood obesity negatively impacts the immune system. Andrew graduated with a BSc (Biology) from Maynooth University before undertaking his PhD there investigating the crosstalk between immune cells, with the aim of harnessing the immune system for novel therapies against cancer. Twitter: @AndyHogan82 and @ucdmedicine

Conor Mulvagh

Dr Conor Mulvagh is a lecturer in Irish History at UCD’s School of History with special responsibility for the Decade of Centenaries. He is also a member of UCD’s Centre for War Studies.

Conor specialises in Westminster politics and Irish constitutional nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Conor teaches courses on memory and commemoration, Home Rule, and the history of Northern Ireland. He previously worked on the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project, & received Irish Research Council New Foundations Funding for a project entitled Universities in Revolution and State Formation. He is currently leading a cross-border project entitled 1916 and me, 2016 and us. Conor has recently published two monographs: Irish Days, Indian Memories: V. V. Giri and Indian Law Students at UCD, 1913-1916 & The Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, 1900-18. He is currently writing a history of UCD during the Irish Revolution. Conor graduated with a PhD from UCD in 2012. Twitter: @conormulvagh and @ucdhistory

Dearbhla Burke

Dearbhla Burke is a PhD student in the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.

Dearbhla is qualified as a chartered physiotherapist from UCD with first class honours in 2014. On achieving the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists' prize for the highest dissertation mark, she decided to further her research pursuits and is now in the 3rd year of her PhD. Her research is focused on the area of spinal cord injury pain. To date she has completed a prevalence study on pain post injury in Ireland, a systematic review of the international prevalence of neuropathic pain post injury, and has piloted a multi-disciplinary pain management programme. She is a keen advocate of the public dissemination of research using non-scientific language and of healthy eating and regular exercise. She teaches Pilates to clients of all ages and fitness levels each week and enjoys running, yoga and the odd triathlon. Twitter: @BurkeDearbhla and @ucdphysiotherapy

Duncan Lennox

Duncan Lennox is the CEO and co-founder of Qstream. Qstream, a spin-out company from Harvard Medical School, is a mobile-first predictive analytics company, with worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts and European headquarters in Ranelagh, Dublin.

Under Duncan's leadership and strategic vision, Qstream has become a fast-growth provider of dynamic sales enablement solutions, capturing the attention of some of the world’s largest enterprise accounts including LinkedIn, MasterCard and Genentech. Duncan previously co-founded and served as CTO of WBT Systems, a spin-out from UCD’s School of Computer Science which developed an award-winning eLearning platform now used by millions of corporate professionals. A recognised industry expert, he lends his knowledge of mobile and web technologies, analytics and eLearning at industry conferences. He has also appeared on CNN and RTÉ discussing topics related to entrepreneurship. He is an information fanatic, an Apple groupie, a practitioner of Aikido, and a private pilot. Duncan graduated with a BSc (Hons.) in Computer Science from University College Dublin. Twitter: @dlennox and @Qstream

John Sloan

John Sloan is an MSc student in Computational Linguistics at UCD’ School of Computer Science.

Prior to John's enrolement as an MSc student this term, John completed an MA in linguistics in the UCD School of Languages, Culture and Linguistics, where his focus was on non-verbal communication and feedback in performance. John is the creator of Emotional Response Language Education (ERLE), a personalised e-learning platform, that utilises facial expressions to provide language students with instant, accurate feedback on their second language production. During a 7-year stay in South Korea, John worked as an English teacher while studying Korean. He taught at Samsung, LG and SK Telecom before opening his own academy for elementary school students. John passed the advanced TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) in 2014. Twitter: @ucdcompsci and @ucd_slcl

Michaela Higgins

Professor Michaela Higgins is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. She is also an Associate Clinical Professor at UCD’s School of Medicine

Prior to Professor Higgins current appointment, Michaela was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Consultant Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. While in Boston, Michaela was involved with the development of a small oncology service over an 18-month period, at Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais in Haiti. This was with support from Partners in Health, a not-for-profit corporation working to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need, in Haiti and around the world. She is a member of Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Trials Awards and Advisory Committee and the Mater Hospital Lung Cancer Working Group. She serves on the UCD Clinical Research Centre Executive Committee. Michaela is enthusiastic about teaching the next generation of medical doctors, and is particularly interested in global oncology. Twitter: @ucdmedicine

Patricia Maguire

Patricia Maguire is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry in UCD’s School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science. She is also a Fellow of the UCD Conway Institute and co-directs the UCD Conway SPHERE translational research group.

Patricia’s research looks at the changing messages our blood can carry in inflammatory diseases such as ischaemic stroke, pre-eclampsia and multiple sclerosis. Understanding these changing messages may speed up disease diagnosis and enable better clinical decisions for the ultimate benefit of people living with such inflammatory-based diseases. Patricia graduated with a Joint Honours in Pharmacology and Molecular Genetics from UCD before completing her PhD in Pharmacology also at UCD. Patricia worked in the pharmaceutical industry, before returning to UCD where she focused on understanding how platelets communicate in our blood and the different messages they contain In addition to her research, Patricia is a keen advocate of supporting women in science and is one of the founding members of UCD Women in Science. She also sits on the UCD advisory committee on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Twitter: @trishmagdowl and @UCD_SBBS

Ron Davies

Ron Davies is a Professor of Economics at UCD’s School of Economics where he specialises in international trade and foreign direct investment.

Dr Davies research focus is on the interaction between globalisation, government policy, and society. In particular, he is interested in how tax and trade policy affect the choices of multinational corporations and the impacts of those choices on the countries where they operate. In line with his research interest in policy, he has provided advice to the Irish government, the World Trade Organisation, UNCTAD, and the OECD, amongst others. He is a fellow with the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, the CES-Ifö, and a founder of the Society of International Trade Theory. In addition, he is on the editorial board of several academic journals, including International Tax and Public Finance where he is editor-in-chief. After completing his PhD at The Pennsylvania State University in 1999, Professor Davies accepted a position at the University of Oregon before moving to UCD in 2008. Twitter: @ron_b_davies @EconomicsUCD

Sandra Collins

Dr Sandra Collins is Director of the National Library of Ireland

Dr Sandra Collins is the Director of the National Library of Ireland (NLI. The NLI collects and makes available the recorded memory of Ireland, caring for more than 10 million items, including books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, drawings, ephemera, photographs and digital media. She was previously the founding Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland in the Royal Irish Academy, where she established and led a national research centre developing policy and e-infrastructure for digital preservation of cultural data. She serves on many international and national policy committees, the Irish Government's Open Data Governance Board, the Irish National Steering Committee on Open Access Policy and the Horizon 2020 Expert Advisory Group on Research Infrastructures. She is a member of the Chester Beatty Library Board of Trustees, the Board of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and the Council of the Library Association of Ireland. Dr Collins completed her PhD UCD’s School of Mathemat

Susan Delaney

Dr Susan Delaney, a clinical psychologist, is Bereavement Services Manager with the Irish Hospice Foundation

Dr Susan Delaney, a clinical psychologist, is Bereavement Services Manager with the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF). She is a member of the International Train-the-Trainers group at ColumbiaUniversity’s Complicated Grief Programme under Professor Kathy Shear and has spearheaded the training and treatment for complicated grief in Ireland. Susan was awarded the title of Fellow in Thanatology by ADEC (Association of Death, Education and Counselling) for her contribution to the bereavement field and is the Editor of Irish Stories of Loss and Hope, published by IHF. The IHF has a long standing relationship with UCD. Therese Brady, who was Director of the MSc programme in Clinical Psychology at UCD for many years, founded, and was honorary Director of the bereavement services at IHF until her death in 1999. Her legacy and the collaboration with UCD continues through the Therese Brady Library at IHF, and the Therese Brady Scholarship. Susan undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate st