The lack of clean water and sanitation affects millions globally. Now, funding has been approved for researchers at UCC to help improve the lives of people across the world.

• Increased employer demand expected for graduates with knowledge of sustainable business practices.
• Funding will also support a number of PhD scholarships over five years.
• AIB’s sustainable green lending book has proved its most resilient during the pandemic.

AIB has announced a partnership with University College Cork (UCC) which will see the bank fund The AIB Chair of Sustainable Business, the first of its kind in Ireland.

AIB has pledged €1.25 million over five years to support the objectives of The AIB Chair of Sustainable Business, which will be based in the Cork University Business School (CUBS), Ireland’s largest business school.

The funding will also support The AIB Sustainable Business Scholars programme which will be established for early career researchers who excel in their field.

UCC palaeontologists have discovered new evidence that the fate of vertebrate animals over the last 400 million years has been shaped by microscopic melanin pigments.

This new twist in the story of animal evolution is based on cutting-edge analyses of melanin granules – melanosomes – in many different fossil and modern vertebrates, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Melanin and melanosomes have traditionally been linked to outermost body tissues such as skin, hair and feathers, with important roles in UV protection and stiffening of tissues. Analyses of where different animals store melanin in the body, however, show that different vertebrate groups concentrate melanin in different organs, revealing shifts in how animals have used melanin over the last 400 million years.

In the autumn of 1845, a young and charismatic African-American abolitionist sailed from America to Ireland for a four-month lecture tour of the island. Frederick Douglass had been born into slavery but escaped bondage on a plantation in Maryland by fleeing to the North, where he became a prominent anti-slavery activist. Douglass lectured to large and enthusiastic audiences in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Belfast, met with Daniel O’Connell, and reflected upon the devastating effects of the famine then beginning to sweep the nation.

To commemorate this historic visit, UCC academics, in collaboration with students, artists, writers and community groups around Ireland, have launched #DouglassWeek with the support of the Frederick Douglass Family. 

Students battling Covid-19 on the frontline are among the high-achievers from University College Cork's College of Medicine and Health to be honoured with an Undergraduate Quercus College Scholarship.

• Professor Psychogiou’s appointment will help Ireland become a European innovation leader for wireless communications and future 6G technologies.
• Inspirational leader in STEM will motivate future generations to pursue a career in microwave engineering, which cannot currently meet demands from industry and has a gender imbalance.

University College Cork and Tyndall National Institute have announced the appointment of Professor Dimitra Psychogiou, a global expert in RF front-end technologies, to the position of Professor of RF Microwave Communications in the School of Engineering.

Prof. Psychogiou will also assume the role of Head of Group for Advanced Radio Frequency (RF) Technologies at the Tyndall National Institute, where she will undertake internationally-leading research at the Microelectronics Circuits Centre Ireland (MCCI).

Professor Psychogiou, who joins from the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, will lead a new research programme to develop disruptive RF technologies for the next generation of 5G/6G communications.

A national study that is examining the issue of drug use among students in higher education, led by Dr Michael Byrne, Head of the Student Health Service at UCC, is underway and students are being asked to check their emails so they can participate. 

Generations of musical talent from Seán Ó Riada to Ann Cleare have learned their trade at University College Cork - and now future cohorts of musicians will benefit as its Department of Music has been awarded the largest gift in its 113 year history.

The estate of Sidney V. Regan has bequeathed €2M to the Department of Music at UCC, and the announcement coincides with the unveiling of UCC’s new Sound Studio, the most significant investment in the Department of Music in recent years.

Professor Eugene C. Freuder, Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science & Information Technology at University College Cork, has been recognised with the world's premier award in the field of artificial intelligence.

Prof. Freuder, the founding director of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, which transitioned into part of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, has been granted the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) Research Excellence Award.

The Research Excellence award is given to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality throughout an entire career yielding several substantial results.