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Students attending Environ 2025 in Dublin
The Irish Environmental Researchers Colloquium (Environ) is the largest annual gathering of environmental researchers in Ireland. It has been held annually since 1991, and is organised by the Environmental Sciences Association of Ireland in collaboration with a university or institute of technology. The conference attracts about 300 delegates annually. The event offers a high-visibility platform for both young and experienced researchers to present their findings to an audience of academia, government bodies and agencies, as well as industry representatives.
This year was the 35th Environ conference, with a theme of “One Health for a Sustainable Future”. The conference was organised in collaboration with University College Dublin (UCD) and held on 10-12 March at the UCD campus.
Several of our students and researchers attended the conference, and presented their work from the different projects.
The EU-funded IMPRESS project was represented by a PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher. Both presented a poster and gave a brief talk on their work.
Poster title: “Duckweed cultivation on fish processing wastewater for biomass production and wastewater remediation”
Poster title: “Shellfish processing wastewater: Rich in nutrients but poorly valorised”
The IMPRESS project (https://impress-he.eu/) is a blue circular bioeconomy project that focuses on innovative food from marine and freshwater ecosystems. At UCC we are looking in particular at the valorisation of fish processing wastewater, by investigating the use of fish processing wastewater as a medium for growing duckweed, remediating the wastewater in the process.
The Azbio project (https://www.ucc.ie/en/duckfeed/azbio/) at UCC is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and Irish Research Council, and co-funded by the Environmental Protection Agency through the SFI-IRC Pathway Award Programme. The Azbio (Azolla-Bioreactor) project will develop pre-requisite expertise needed to optimise year-round indoor industry-based Azolla cultivation, as well as the exploitation of valuable Azolla biomass.
The PhD student on the project presented a poster and gave a brief talk on the work in this project.
Poster title: “Surface density and plantlet abundance influence yield of floating Azolla filiculoides used to remediate an agri-food wastewater”
The Duck-Feed project (https://www.ucc.ie/en/duckfeed/) was represented by our MSc student in Microbiology, who also presented a poster and gave a brief presentation. This project is funded by Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), and focuses on the use of duckweed as an alternative, sustainable source of protein for Ireland, thereby contributing to the circular economy. The work presented at the conference focused on research on bacterial safety of duckweed grown on dairy and abattoir wastewaters.
Our student standing next to the ESAI Environ poster