• Question: Why is your research important? What are the possible real world applications?

    Asked by 11 to Sarah, Kieran, Kathryn, Joanne, Chris on 8 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Kathryn Schoenrock

      Kathryn Schoenrock answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      I study how kelp forests work in Ireland. One part of my experiments looks at how fast kelp grow, how they continue to live on the same beach, and how old they get in certain places (some of them can be older than 12 years!). This is important because it tells us how stable those forests are on the coast. The other part of my experiments tells me what lives, hunts, and is born in the kelp forests. We also know that many sea squirts, small crabs, and sea anemones live to live on kelps themselves. So this shows us how important these forests are for fish and other animals on the coastline. Why is that important for you? Well if you like to eat fish or go to aquariums, the experiments I do give us information on how these animals eat, have babies, and grow old to the harvest-able age.

    • Photo: Sarah Guerin

      Sarah Guerin answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      My research is important for two reasons- by looking at how parts of your body generate electricity we can understand how your body functions and communicates with itself.
      Secondly (and also the real world applications) by making these molecules that generate electricity in the lab, we can make sensors for phones, cars and video games. Any other questions on this? đŸ™‚

    • Photo: Chris Werner

      Chris Werner answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      Great question everyone! My research at the moment is focused on creating high resolution gridded climate datasets for Ireland. When I say high resolution I mean 1.5 km, doesn’t sound great but really high-res when you consider how computationally expensive climate models are! There is constant demand from industry, academics and government for datasets like these, because they look at the climate from 1981 to present. From looking at things like this you can study patterns in them and from that much better decisions can be made looking into the future as the effects of climate change becomes more apparent.

      For some of these variables they have the potential to be used as flood prediction systems. The more I work on them, the more we’ll get out of them! Each dataset is hundreds of gigabytes and ranging into the terabytes, so thats why I need a big powerful computer to work on them!

    • Photo: Joanne Duffy

      Joanne Duffy answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      For my research, we’re hoping to be able to make a glue product that could be used in surgery. The glue works underwater because it comes from barnacles, so we’re hoping it’ll work in the presence of lots of different liquids!

Comments