2009 Press Releases

Spring Conferring at UCC
27.03.2009

Over 90 postgraduate and postdoctoral students were conferred today (Friday, March 27th 2009) at UCC’s Spring Conferring Ceremony. The students graduated from the four colleges: Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences; Business & Law; Medicine & Health; Science, Engineering & Food Science.
The Conferring Address was delivered by Mr Martin Cronin, Chief Executive of Forfás. In his speech, Mr Cronin advised the students not to be  overwhelmed by all the economic gloom in Ireland at the moment.  “We achieved a superb period of export led growth in the 1990’s which brought us a diverse, modern, sophisticated enterprise base, and we have one of the best demographic profiles in Europe. What is ebbing away today is the unsustainable growth of more recent years which was driven by unrealistically low interest rates and unrealistically high asset prices, particularly property prices.  We still retain our modern enterprise base.  It continues to evolve with more R&D and more traded high value services and it has the capacity to drive future growth if we keep our heads and pull together through this downturn.There will be lots of opportunity for people like you to take this country forward to heights it has never scaled before.  I know you can do it and I wish you the best of success in every aspect of your lives", he said.

Among those to be conferred were Dr Catherine Stanton, and her husband Professor Paul Ross, who have the unique distinction of being the first ever couple to be conferred simultaneously with a Doctorate of Science (DSc) from the National University of Ireland (NUI). The DSc is the highest academic honour awarded by the NUI and is based on consistent excellence in scientific research in a specific area.

Professor Ross and Dr Stanton are based at the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Moorepark, Fermoy and they also have strong research ties with UCC. Both are Principal Investigators in the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC), funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and industry, and in the Food for Health Research Centre (FHI), funded by Enterprise Ireland and four Irish food companies. The APC and FHI are major research centres dedicated to the exploration of gut bacteria and novel functional food ingredients for the improvement of human health through food and pharma applications.

Also conferred were 30 students with a PhD in Arts, Engineering, Food Science & Technology, Law and Science and 27 with a Master’s in Business Association (MBA).  A further three students were conferred with an MPhil while 18 students were conferred with an MSc in Science, Commerce, Food Science & Technology and Medicine & Health. There were two Doctorates of Clinical Dentistry, four MD’s and four MEngSc in Civil, Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering.

Picture shows Professor Paul Ross and Dr Catherine Stanton who were both conferred with a Doctorate of Science (DSc) with their children Fiona and Stephen.

1040MMcS



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