First Joint CIT-UCC PhD for the School of Microbiology

23 Feb 2018

Adam Clooney PhD was conferred at the spring 2018 Conferring ceremony on 23 February.

Adam’s PhD was jointly supervised and awarded by University College Cork – National University of Ireland and Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). It is the first School of Microbiology doctorate degree between the two institutions governed by a formal Collaboration Agreement. Adam’s thesis entitled ‘Microbiota, Diet and Medication in Human Gut Disorders’ was supervised by Dr Marcus Claesson, School of Microbiology, UCC; Professor Fergus Shanahan, Department of Medicine, UCC; Dr Aisling O'Driscoll, formerly of CIT and currently working in UCC with the Department of Computer Science; and Professor Roy Sleator, Department of Biological Sciences, CIT.

Also graduating with a Joint doctoral degree in absentia was Dr Nurzhan Kuanyshev. Nurzhan was one of 11 students recruited to a Marie-Curie PhD training network that UCC co-ordinates (2013-2017) (https://yeastcell.eu/). Nurzhan was jointly supervised by Dr John Morrissey, School of Microbiology, UCC and Prof Paola Branduardi in Milan and he spent significant amounts of time in both institutions. Nurzhan’s thesis on the ‘Elucidation of Weak Organic Acid Resistance Mechanisms in Non-Saccharomyces Yeast’ is among the relatively rare joint international PhDs. The UCC joint doctorate programme agreement with the Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca was preceded by an inter-institutional collaborative agreement between the two institutions.