Profile

I’m a 25 year old PhD student, born in Cork, grew up in Carlow and have been in Dublin since the start of my undergraduate degree. I have loved science since I was a kid, and used to pore over encyclopedias as much as the Harry Potter series. I love learning how things work in great detail, like why the sky is red in the morning or evening, how rainbows are formed, anything like that. Following this passion, I’ve ended up with myself near the end of a PhD, and over the course of it I’ve developed a love for teaching and explaining science, so hopefully I’ll be able to make that a part of my future career. This is my first real attempt at anything like that, so let me know how I do!

In my spare time I am a member of the Order of Malta and have been since I was young. I like to run, but haven’t done as much of that as I should. I used to do fencing (swordfighting) when I was in my undergrad. I am a big nerd and love video games with friends, and watching tv and movies (currently loving The Flash). I love being involved in youth leadership and team building, and was once a member of Dáil na nÓg as a representative for Carlow, and was involved in a youth peer leadership program in my school called Meitheal.

I’ve been involved in a few different projects over the course of my PhD, but the main overarching one that I’m trying to finish now is looking at what we call the bio-nano interactions of particles.

Nanoparticles are tiny constructs of material that show very unique and odd properties due to their small size. For a simple example, gold as we know it is normally yellowy when large. But at a very small size, gold particles actually appear very red, due to how they interact with light at a small size.

They’ve been studied in detail now for many decades, and have shown loads of promise as super materials for batteries, lubricants or solar panels, as well as showing great promise as next generation medical treatments. However, scientific research being scientific research, it’s very difficult to really make things work as we’d like. If a nanoparticle enters your body or the environment, all the proteins and fats and anything available will cover it and give the particle a new “appearance”, like a cloak. This cloak, or “corona” as we call it, is then what the environment sees, and as a result can interfere with how the environment acts towards it, in the same way someone with a scary Hallowe’en costume would be treated very differently to a normal person. This can be a nuisance, interfering with the job we designed the nanoparticle for, or dangerous, if your body or the environment reacts badly to what it sees.

My work is based upon trying to understand why the particles act the way they do, and trying to see if we can control the interactions as best we can. To do this, I make lots of different sizes, shapes and types of gold nanoparticles (which involves a lot of really nice colours). At the same time, I’m developing a technique that will hopefully one day allow us to very simply decide whether a nanoparticle type is dangerous or beneficial in an easy and quick manner, as currently this requires a lot of effort and experiments.

On an average day, I’ll come into the lab sometime before 10am. There aren’t any set hours in my lab, once you do your fair share of the work my boss doesn’t mind when I show up or leave. Being a PhD student is very freeing in this way, but you have to have a lot of self discipline to make sure you do your work and don’t get lazy. I spend the morning planning my experiments at my writing desk, doing calculations, estimating how much time things will take and booking machines that I’ll need at the right time. I’m in a large group of 30 PhD students, so there’s a lot of working around other people. After this we’ll have a coffee break; there’s a lot of coffee drank every week, I used to hate black coffee but I’ve since gotten used to it.

After coffee, I put on my lab coat, gloves and goggles, and start to prepare the standard stock solutions I require for the day or week, different acids, protein solutions and pH buffers. Every week I must prepare a few new batches of nanoparticles, in whatever shape I need. I then look at the different ways they interact with certain proteins or other targets, and how the interactions of the particles are affected. I try to see if the ways they act can be made to be beneficial for human health, or if there’s any possibility that they could be dangerous, which is important in case they are released into the environment.

To see this, I use a special machine that I stick different types of targets into, the small protein receptors in peoples’ bodies that the particles could end up interacting with. By adding my particles in, the machine is then able to tell me if they hit the target, how much and gives me an idea of what type of interaction it is. I then use this information to try and identify what other types of interactions may be looked at, and any further challenges to be investigated.

Nanochemistry is a huge and well funded area of research, but outside of computer chips and science fiction, few people I ever speak to realise how much money is going into looking how it could be beneficial to human health. I would love to use the money, in collaboration with AMBER who already have a program for nanoscience for primary schools, to develop a small workshop based upon the broader applications of nanochemistry and what makes it so interesting, varied and challenging, for a secondary school level. I would like to start in Carlow, with my own school and other schools in the town, and use the feedback and experience to improve and apply for further funding, depending on how well it goes.