News
Three New Professors at the School of Engineering and Architecutre
We would like to congratulate Jorge Oliveira, Maria de Sousa Gallagher and Padraig Cantillon Murphy on their recent professorial promotions.
Jorge Oliveira has been Senior Lecturer in Process and Chemical Engineering at UCC since 2002. His area of expertise is food processing engineering, namely process modelling and assessment (including Quality by Design), new product development, packaging and shelf life. His current research priorities are in the development of food products with new protein sources and affective product design of foods. He has published extensively in agro-food and engineering journals (h-index 29 in Scopus, 37 in Google Scholar, i10 index in Google Scholar 95), supervised 21 PhDs and 17 Masters by Research and has been a lead researcher in many national and international research projects. He also has a long track record in industry consultancy, currently serving as a member of the board of directors of a ready-meal company advising on innovation and quality systems. He served as Acting Head of the then Department of Process and Chemical Engineering between 2006 and 2016 and is the current Head of the School of Engineering and Architecture.
Professor Maria Sousa Gallagher
Maria Sousa Gallagher has been lecturing for 30 years, and for the last 20 years has been Lecturer/ Senior lecturer in Process & Chemical Engineering (PCE), School of Engineering at University College Cork (UCC).
Professor Sousa Gallagher’s expertise are in the areas of Manufacturing Competitiveness and Circular economy, including integrated processing technologies, quality by design and sustainable engineering systems, and novel materials for the advancement of the Circular Economy and the SDGs. She has more than 25 years of experience in European and National research programmes in innovative and applied projects with several International partners and industry. Prof. Sousa Gallagher’s led and/or has been involved in 27 successful competitive Research Grants. Currently, she is the coordinator and chief investigator in EU ERA‐MIN2 “Recycling of End of Life products” (RecEOL), which is providing evidence that a patented recycling process for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment is economically viable and environmentally sustainable. She is Partner and PI, on the EU INTERREG-AA project “Smart and eco‐innovative SEAFOOD processes and products for healthy AGEing” (SEAFOOD‐AGE), which tackles a common social and economic challenge in the Atlantic Area: an ageing population. She is a Principal Investigator (PI) in the Environmental Research Institute (ERI), Food Institute, and Associate Academic and PI in Tyndall National Institute.
Prof. Sousa Gallagher supervised successfully to completion 70 Postgraduate students (13 PhD and 61 MEngSc). She has a strong scientific publication record with high impact factor (Google scholar, 5552 citations, h-index 34, i10index 78 in engineering, food science/ technology), comprising over 250 publications.
Prof. Sousa-Gallagher is Director of Masters/ PG Diploma in Pharmaceutical & Biopharmaceutical Engineering. She has been leading the Biopharmaceutical Engineering for the last 15 years at UCC, and over the last 10 years has successfully supervised more than 50 industry-based Minor Research Theses. She coordinates 17 modules (7 UG, 10 PG), and she lectures on the BSc and MSc in Biotechnology and BSc in Biochemistry.
Padraig’s ERC project, entitled DeepTrack, is an ambitious and new approach to reduce radiation exposure from x-rays during surgery. The project will investigate safe, low-frequency magnetic fields to track and navigate instruments inside the patient without x-rays. While Padraig’s team have been working on magnetic tracking technology for ten years, this is the first time that on-chip sensors that are small enough to be placed on the tiniest medical instruments will be investigated. If successful, the project could make surgery safer by reducing the use of x-rays, and increase the precision of tools used to remove diseases like cancer.