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Lijuan Marissa Zhou and Nina Hanzlikova pictured with Dr Lisa Looney (centre)

Two DCU students awarded prestigious placements with IBM Research laboratories, Brazil

For the first time this year IBM Ireland, in association with IBM Research Brazil, have offered two young DCU researchers the opportunity to spend 10 weeks at the IBM Research Brazil laboratories in Rio de Janeiro during the summer. These prestigious placements for early career researchers have previously only been offered, under their Global University Programme, to those undertaking research at elite universities in the USA.

DCU is the first university outside North America to collaborate with IBM in this way, reflecting a strong relationship between the company and DCU. IBM Research Brazil was established in June 2010 as the first IBM Research lab in South America with locations in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Their research focuses on natural resource discovery, smarter cities and human systems, smarter devices and service systems.

Our two young DCU researchers, Nina Hanzlikova (National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology) and Lijuan Marissa Zhou (CLARITY) now both associated with IBM Ireland, have been awarded this opportunity following an open internal competition. The company is supporting their flights, accommodation and salary over the period. The young women demonstrated through their strong academic records, well considered personal statements, the support of their respective supervisors, and the alignment of their research and skills set with the agenda of the lab in Brazil, that they would be excellent ambassadors and benefit hugely from the opportunity.

This initiative is a very valuable step in deepening DCU’s relationship with IBM through engagement with doctoral research, and very much in keeping with our University of Enterprise focus.

Speaking of her upcoming trip, Lijuan Marissa Zhou, said she was extremely excited to have been chosen to be one of the young researchers to go to IBM Brazil. “It is not just a wonderful chance to enrich my personal work experience, but more importantly, it provides an opportunity to work with one of the true leaders of the ICT field and get an insight into the factors affecting researchers in industry. I firmly believe that by applying my research to solve real-world problems is very valuable for me. Upon my return to DCU, I look forward to being able to share my experiences and learning with the DCU community”, she said.

Nina Hanzlikova was equally thrilled to have been selected to travel to the IBM Research laboratories in Brazil, saying, “The IBM internship is a great opportunity to gain experience of research in the industrial setting. I look forward to working in a large multinational company setting and providing direct benefits to customers as a result. It will be enjoyable applying my expertise in interesting, exciting and challenging technical problems in mathematics and computer science, and seeing them contributing to a finished commercial product. After completing my PhD I hope to apply my mathematical modelling and software engineering background in industry”.