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Dr Marguerite Nyhan

Biography

Dr. Marguerite Nyhan is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Environmental Engineering & Future Sustainability at University College Cork and a Visiting Scientist at Harvard University in Boston. Dr. Nyhan is also a Principal Investigator at the Environmental Research Institute and a Funded Investigator at the MaREI Centre for Climate, Energy and Marine. Since joining UCC in 2019, Marguerite has won 5.1 million euro in funding as lead PI for both research and research-driven educational initiatives.

Dr. Nyhan founded and directs the Future Sustainability Research Group, which pursues frontier research focused on the development of intelligent solutions for sustainable, zero carbon, healthy, liveable and equitable cities of the future.

While conducting her PhD in Environmental Engineering in Trinity College Dublin, Nyhan was invited to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Following the completion of her PhD, she was hired as a Post-Doctoral researcher at MIT and led the Urban Environmental Research Team within MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory. Subsequently, Nyhan was hired as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. Later, she was recruited by the United Nations in New York City.

With expertise in environmental engineering, urban analytics and public health, Marguerite is interested in understanding how new and emerging technologies including data analytics and AI can be harnessed in the design and optimisation of zero carbon, sustainable, healthy and liveable cities of the future. Nyhan has published groundbreaking research on the application of ICT-technologies in understanding urban dynamics and urban environmental metrics at city-wide scales; in modelling emissions and human exposures to air pollution and greenspace; and in determining associations between exposures and human health outcomes using environmental epidemiological modelling methods. Her work has also focused on harnessing emerging technologies for sustainable development and humanitarian efforts.

Marguerite lectures in environmental engineering, systems thinking for sustainability and in data analytics. She set-up and directs a number of university-wide and inter-institutional postgraduate programmes in Sustainability in Enterprise under the ‘Sustainable Futures’ project.

Marguerite’s work has been featured extensively in the media, including in the Guardian newspaper, NPR, the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. She has spoken to a range of audiences globally; from lecturing at MIT and Harvard, and giving a TED talk in her home country of Ireland to addressing the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya.

Dr. Nyhan is always interested in hearing from people who would like to pursue a Masters, a PhD or conduct Post-Doctoral research with her supervision.

Research Interests

• Urban environmental engineering
• Climate friendly, healthy and liveable cities of the future
• Air quality, urban mobility and health
• Environmental exposures and epidemiology
• Climate change and health
• Transportation emissions modelling
• Urban analytics
• Intelligent and responsive cities
• Big data and Artificial Intelligence
• The Sustainable Development Goals
• Applying emerging technologies to humanitarian efforts
• National and international climate dialogues and policy

Publications

Peer Reviewed Journals (Selected)

 

1. Nyhan, M., Grauwin, S., Britter, R., Misstear, B., McNabola, A., Laden, F., Barrett, S., Ratti, C., 2016. Exposure Track -The Impact of Mobile Device Based Mobility Patterns on Quantifying Population Exposure to Air Pollution. Environmental Science & Technology. 50(17):9671-81. (IF 8) Open access: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b02385 Project website: http://senseable.mit.edu/urban-exposures/

2. O’Regan, A., Hunter, R., Nyhan, M., 2021. “Biophilic Cities” – Quantifying the Impact of Google Street View-Derived Greenspace Exposures on Socioeconomic Factors & Self-Reported Health. Environmental Science & Technology. 55, 13, 9063–9073. (IF 8) Open access: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c01326

3. Nyhan, M., Kloog, I., Britter, R., Ratti, C., Koutrakis, P., 2019. Quantifying Population Exposure to Air Pollution Using Mobility Patterns Inferred from Mobile Phone Data. Nature - Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. 29, 238-249. Article page: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0038-9 Open access: go.nature.com/2r3cU3O

4. Nyhan, M., Rice, M., Coull, B.A., Garshick, E., Vokonas, P., Schwartz, J., Gold, D., Koutrakis, P., 2019. Ambient Particle Radioactivity and Lung Function. Environment International. 130, 104795. (IF 8.0) Open access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.04.066

5. Nyhan, M., Coull, B.A., Blomberg, A.J., Vieira, C.L.Z., Garshick, E., Aba, A., Vokonas, P., Gold, D., Schwartz, J., Koutrakis, P., 2018. Associations Between Ambient Particle Radioactivity and Blood Pressure: The Normative Aging Study. Journal of the American Heart Association. 7(6): e008245. (IF 5.5) Open access: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.117.008245

Please see Dr. Nyhan’s research group website (www.nyhanlab.org) for a full list of publications.

 

 

Teaching Activity

Dr. Nyhan delivers the following modules 

CE3009 Environmental Engineering

CE4010 Water & Wastewater Engineering

NE6015 Data Analytics for Engineering

EG6003 Systems Thinking in Environmental Sustainability