Winners of the Trinity Research Doctorate Awards supporting PI-based research projects have been announced!

Dr Jin Zhao

Project Title: AI-driven resilience enhancement of power grid with high renewable energy penetration

Renewable energy resources (RESs) will provide 75% to 100% of the electricity in the whole EU energy system in 2050. In Ireland, there will be 80% renewable-based electricity by 2030. The future power system is expected to be not only green but also highly resilient -- provide secure electricity even during extreme events such as storms, droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. Improving power grid operation flexibility is an efficient way to enhance electricity resilience.

The project uses flexible grid operation to enhance power grid resilience under high renewable energy penetration conditions. The goal of the project is to protect electricity and mitigate outage events under extreme weather conditions. Different from the conventional mathematical programming methods, AI-based data-driven, model-free, and adaptive learning methods will be used to develop the ‘intelligent brain’ that can generate real-time extreme weather defense for power grid operation.

Three fundamental questions are listed as the focus of this project: 1) For pre-event preparedness, how to determine the optimal preparation scheme when the event is coming? 2) To mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events, how to use flexible energy management to support critical loads? 3) How to maximize the capability of available resources in the post-event restoration process?

Four Work packages (WPs) have been designed to answer the three fundamental questions. WP1: Energy and system forecasting based on the evaluation of extreme events. WP2: Grid pre-preparation before the weather event hits the grid. WP3: Critical load survival during the event process. WP4: Bottom-up system restoration.

This project enhances our local and global social and sustainability ambitions by building green and resilient electricity against extreme events as well as the corresponding AI technique development. The success of the project will mitigate or even eliminate the large-scale outage events which have huge social impacts.

View the College profile

Dr Johanna Vos

Assistant Professor, School of Physics (Astrophysics)

Project Title: Atmospheres of Giant Extrasolar Worlds

The exploration of worlds beyond our solar system aims to answer one of the most fundamental questions: Are We Alone in the Universe? To answer this question we must explore the diversity of exoplanets and their atmospheres. A growing number of ‘free-floating’ exoplanets have been discovered in recent years – these isolated worlds wander through the Milky Way without a host star. These worlds can be observed in exceptional detail without the glare of a nearby star. The proposed project will reveal the three-dimensional nature of exoplanet atmospheres by tracing atmospheric properties, including clouds and chemistry, in a sample of free-floating giant exoplanets. The student will make use of incoming data from the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope. This project will enable a new era of direct, multi-dimensional exoplanet characterisation.

View the College profile

Dr Michael Carty

Project Title: Exploring inflammatory cell death in sepsis

Uncontrolled infectious diseases caused by viruses, bacteria or fungi can lead to sepsis. Sepsis is a complex condition defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Sepsis is a leading cause of mortality, responsible for 11 million deaths globally and costs billions in healthcare spending. Decades of work have failed to provide better treatments for sepsis, where antibiotics and support of circulation have remained the main treatments. Unfortunately, these treatments often fail, resulting in a 20% sepsis mortality rate in Irish hospitals. In the last decade work in animal models have shown that host cell death, specifically endothelial cell death, is a major driver of sepsis. However, supporting work from more clinically relevant human studies is lacking. Multiorgan failure in sepsis develops due to damage of endothelial cells lining blood vessels within organs. This results in increased leakage of fluid into the tissues and increased intravascular clotting.
While endothelial cell death is important in sepsis, we do not fully understand the mechanisms involved in this process. There are 3 main types of cell death, apoptosis, pyroptosis, and necroptosis. Apoptosis is a non-lytic form of programmed cell death and is regarded as immunologically silent. By contrast pyroptosis, and necroptosis are lytic forms of cell death where the cell contents are released into the surrounding environment which drives inflammation. Pyroptosis occurs after inflammasome activation, driven by caspase cleavage of gasdermin proteins, whereas necroptosis occurs after RIPK3 activation resulting in the phosphorylation of MLKL. Until recently it was though that all 3 types of cell death were independent. However, work in mouse cells has shown that these 3 forms of cell death can occur in the same cell in a process known as panoptosis. Therefore, the aim of this work is to determine if panoptosis can occur in human endothelial cells following infection with influenza virus, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans infection as representative viral, bacterial, and fungal infections respectively.
The second aim of the project is to determine if cells undergoing this form of cell death can be rescued. The NRF-2 pathway induces cytoprotective and anti-oxidant systems, and therefore is an attractive way to alleviate the pathological processes of sepsis. Current treatments for sepsis are failing due to the high levels of anti-microbial resistance among causative microorganisms, therefore findings from this work may uncover novel approaches to treating patients with sepsis. .

View the College profile

Dr Yvonne Codd

Project Title: Parenting Matters with Arthritis: Developing and Testing a Parent-focused Intervention Programme to Support Parenting with Inflammatory Arthritis

Individuals with ill-health or disability can often experience symptoms and difficulties that negatively affect their ability to perform parenting roles. Chronic conditions including inflammatory arthritis can fluctuate and vary in symptom severity and disease trajectory. This unpredictability in health can further negatively influence the experience and enjoyment of providing the care, nurture, play, and educational aspects of the parent role. Individuals with inflammatory arthritis who are parents have highlighted parenting as an important occupational role and a priority for living well, and they have identified that they would like support with this parenting role from occupational therapists as part of healthcare delivery.
The overall aim of this project is to design and assess the feasibility of a parent-focused intervention to support parenting for individuals living with inflammatory arthritis.
A mixed method study design, following the Medical Research Council framework for complex interventions (Craig et al., 2008), will include four work packages; (I) engage key stakeholders to explore the barriers and facilitators to parenting with inflammatory arthritis using a qualitative-descriptive design, (II) a systematic review and meta-analysis reviewing interventions that support parenting, (III) a nominal group technique consensus study prioritising intervention content and delivery, and (IV) a single-arm feasibility study with qualitative-descriptive design evaluated intervention feasibility and acceptability.
Individual work package findings and the composite findings of this study will provide important insights into the scale of understanding and needs of individuals with inflammatory arthritis who are parents. Furthermore, findings will provide important insights into the pilot testing of the designed parent-focused intervention to establish if it is useful in supporting parenting role performance and engagement while living with inflammatory arthritis. This project will identify key learning opportunities for, and testing of, occupational therapy approaches which may be useful for the profession when working with parents. In this way this project contributes to the important local and sustainable goals by increasing participation in meaningful life roles, enhancing opportunities for well-being and reducing health inequalities.

View the College profile

Dr Conor Finlay

Project Title: Mapping Macrophage Cell State Transition in Inflammation and Infection at Single Cell Resolution

Immune cells lie at the heart of inflammatory disease and infection. In inflammation and infection, an immune cell called the monocyte travels from the bloodstream into the affected organs where they turn into another cell called a macrophage. These macrophages can play good and bad roles. Firstly, macrophages can kill microbes but they can also become pro-inflammatory and directly damage tissues by producing toxic molecules. Furthermore, some macrophages can become anti-inflammatory and alleviate inflammation and repair damaged organs. Thus, macrophages are a type of jack-of-all-trades cell with the potential to perform good and bad functions.

We are interested in studying how macrophages contribute to organ damage caused by inflammation during infection and autoimmunity, the process whereby the immune system attacks its own tissues. To do this we want to every cell in a given inflamed site is doing and how it talks to its neighbours. Is there a particular cell signal that causes tissue damage, and can we use this knowledge to investigate new ways to turn on and off inf? This might seem far-fetched if it wasn’t for a transformative new technology called Single Cell Omics. My lab has taken precious patient samples and created new single cell omics datasets that contain macrophages. Us scientists like to share, and every day similar datasets are being uploaded to publicly available websites by other researchers and doctors. To mine these datasets we require specialist scientists called bioinformaticians who have right combination of biological and computational skills.

Our research will focus two diseases. Firstly is pleural infection, a complication of pneumonia resulting in fluid accumulation in the lung lining, with a high mortality rate. Macrophages are the most common cell found in the pleural fluid in healthy people, yet we know very little about their role in pleural infection. The second disease also has a critical role of macrophages but in a different organ, the kidney. This disease, ANCA-associated vasculitis, is caused by a serious ‘auto-immune’ reaction that damages the filtration unit of the kidney by an influx of toxic macrophages. This project will allow us to hire an excellent scientist who will create an interaction map of inflammation in the kidney and the pleural cavity and answer how macrophages talk to other cells. We believe modelling these interactions will highlight new ways to intervene in catastrophic inflammation.

View the College profile

Dr Jessica Knapp

Project Title: Ask a farmer: socio-ecological factors affecting pollinator conservation in agricultural landscapes

Biodiversity conservation must be functional and sustainable to respond to global environmental change. Humans are critical to modifying environments. However, national and international policies generally lack an appreciation beyond the 'rational' (ecology and economics) of what motivates or constrains people's conservation efforts, and we have failed to halt biodiversity loss to jeopardise our local and global sustainability goals. Pollinators are a group of highly valued insects for their pollination services and beauty. However, pollinator diversity has declined over the past century, especially in intensively cultivated agricultural landscapes, like Ireland, where demands for agricultural production have destroyed habitats and increased their exposure to pesticides and disease. Conservation interventions and policies, including the pioneering All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (AIPP), exist to reduce these stressors. However, these policies still, generally, don’t appreciate human behaviour.

This PhD will contribute to the paradigm shift in pollinator conservation by integrating social and ecological sciences to enhance the effectiveness of pollinator conservation (via the AIPP) in agricultural landscapes. This study recognises that farmer decision-making is complex and influenced by ecological and social factors, necessitating a holistic approach beyond traditional ecological or ecological economic work. This proposal will increase the uptake and continuation of AIPP by expanding traditional, evidence-based conservation research with a greater understanding of the social factors (beyond finances) that affect farmer behaviour around pollinator interventions and policies. This will be achieved by meeting four objectives: (1) to perform a systematic review of farmer conservation behaviour (Chapter 2), (2) to identify and quantify farmers' motivations, capabilities, and opportunities for pollinator conservation via interviews (Chapter 3), (3) to test the ecological effectiveness of two key actions proposed by the AIPP (Chapter 4), and (4) to develop a strategy to enhance the AIPP that increases the uptake and continuation of pollinator conservation by integrating social and ecological perspectives (Chapter 5).

This PhD will contribute knowledge to provide stakeholders (policymakers, conservationists, and farmers) with robust, generalisable, and holistic recommendations to strengthen pollinator conservation in agricultural landscapes in Ireland and beyond. In an era of unprecedented environmental change and biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to provide evidence-based policy to sustain and increase our commitment to biodiversity conservation that enhances our local and global social and sustainability ambitions. This experience will equip the student with transferable skills around sustainability (among others) to expand their perspective beyond academic research.

View the College profile

Dr Peter Kinnevey

Project Title: Investigating the emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) from commensal vancomycin-susceptible E. faecium isolates in a large Dublin hospital: investigating dynamic transmission pathways among patients and hospital environments.

Peter’s research interests focus on the population biology of bacterial pathogens associated with healthcare-associated infections and infection prevention and control (IPC) strategies, policies and education. Enterococci, especially Enterococcus faecium, are significant nosocomial bacterial pathogens globally that pose a unique challenge due to their ability to rapidly disseminate in healthcare environments, to resist decontamination and to persist for extensive periods. They also frequently exhibit resistance to multiple antibiotics. Ireland reported one of the highest rates of invasive vancomycin-resistant E. faecium (VREfm) infections in Europe for over a decade. Vancomycin-susceptible enterococci (VSEfm) are common gut bacteria in healthcare individuals. It is possible the dominant E. faecium lineages identified among Irish hospital VREfm are prevalent in non-healthcare settings in the community as commensal organisms of humans.

This project will be undertaken in collaboration with clinical microbiologist and medical scientist colleagues at St. James’s Hospital (SJH), Dublin. Patient carriage of VREfm and VSEfm will be investigated over a two-year period by anonymous testing of VREfm screening swabs taken at St. James’s Hospital. In parallel, environmental sampling of frequent high-touch sites will also be undertaken. Representative isolates will be investigated by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to determine relatedness and to characterise mobile genetic elements responsible for spread of antimicrobial resistance genes. WGS is currently the gold standard for investigating the relatedness of bacterial isolates and for monitoring their evolution and spread.

An investigation of both VREfm and VSEfm populations is necessary to determine how VREfm emerge from VSEfm present in healthy individuals or if there are highly adaptable strains of VREfm prevalent within hospitals. It is possible that the major groupings or complex types (CTs) prevalent in Irish hospital VREfm populations will be reflected in community VSEfm populations. It is imperative that we gain insights into how new VREfm strains arise to facilitate our understanding of their transmission pathways so that appropriate interventions can be developed to limit their spread.

View the College profile

Dr Emily Barnes

Project Title: Revised abstract for Trinity Research Doctorate Awards

Though dyslexia is one of the most common learning differences in Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools, there is a dearth of literacy interventions available for the Irish language at present. Such resources are needed in order to ensure students with Additional Educational Needs can thrive in Irish-medium education. From the perspective of both educational and linguistic equity, it is important that students in Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools have access to research-based intervention materials in Irish which are comparable to those available in English-medium schools.

This project will utilise Design-Based Research (McKenny and Reeves, 2018) - a principled method of designing and evaluating resources– as a framework. Within this framework, this project will involve:

1. The design and implementation of a hybrid systematic literature review on effective elements of dyslexia interventions;
2. The design of a prototype intervention incorporating findings from the literature review as well as linguistic, sociolinguistic and pegagogical knowledge;
3. The qualitative evaluation of the intervention with teachers and students, focusing on the perceived efficacy and difficulty level of the intervention, the practicality of its implementation and the student experience. Voices from primary students and teachers in both Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools will inform the evaluation.

The impact of this project spans research and practice; it will add to the knowledge base in relation to dyslexia interventions across languagues and within bilingual populations, while also providing the practical output of a prototype intervention. .

View the College profile