2013 Press Releases
RIA honours UCC Academics
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) has continued a 228-year tradition by admitting twenty-one new members, including four UCC academics.
Alan Dobson, Gerard Kiely, Tomás Ó Carragáin and Terence O’Reilly were honoured for their world-class contribution to science and the humanities. Election to membership of the Royal Irish Academy is a public recognition of academic excellence and is the highest academic honour in Ireland.
Professor Alan Dobson is Director of the Environmental Research Institute and Professor in the Microbiology Department at University College Cork. His main field of expertise is in bacterial and fungal genetics, a topic on which he has, to date, published over 120 papers. He is a previous recipient of the Royal Irish Academy Medal in Microbiology (1999) and was awarded a DSc (from NUI) in 2006.
Prof Gerard Kiely is Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at University College Cork, and a Principal Investigator at the university’s Environmental Research Institute. He leads a group of researchers focused on hydrology, climate change and terrestrial greenhouse gas fluxes. He is internationally recognised for his expertise in greenhouse gas fluxes from grasslands and peatlands, providing new insights into soil carbon sequestration.
Dr Tomás Ó Carragáin is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at University College Cork. He specialises in early medieval archaeology and has carried out important work on early Irish ecclesiastical architecture, the archaeology of ritual practice and the archaeology of Christianisation. He has won several awards for his scholarship, most notably for his distinguished book Churches in early medieval Ireland: Architecture, ritual and memory (Yale University Press, 2011).
Prof Terence O'Reilly is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Hispanic Studies at University College Cork. His principal field of research is sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, especially the history and influence of its religious thought. His most important recent book is The Bible in the literary imagination of the Spanish Golden Age: images and texts from Columbus to Velázquez (St Joseph’s University Press, 2010).
Also amongst those admitted today were: Susan Denham, Chief Justice; Nuala O’Loan, former Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman; and Michael McElroy, who was one of Al Gore’s advisers on climate change.
Those elected are entitled to use the designation ‘MRIA’ after their name. There are 474 Members of the Academy including: Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, TK Whittaker (public servant) Mary McAleese (President of Ireland 1997-2011), Frances Ruane (DG of ESRI), Maurice Manning (NUI Chancellor), Patrick Honohan (Governor of the Central Bank), and writer and cartographer Tim Robinson.