Faculty of Engineering and Computing header
Faculty of Engineering and Computing
Shows Prof Daire Keogh addressing the crowd at a recent DCU APT event
Prof Daire Keogh addresses the crowd at the DCU APT Industry day event. Credit: Kyran O'Brien

DCU APT marks Institute launch as part of industry engagement day

Research news - DCU APT relaunch
In March, the DCU Advanced Manufacturing Technology Institute launched as part of an industry day hosted in the university's new Polaris Building. The new Institute is an evolution of the DCU Advanced Manufacturing Centre. The wider event was designed to engage companies to collaborate with the institute.

Since its founding in 2012, The Advanced Manufacturing Centre, now Institute, brought in €15 million in external funding and has supported forty company projects. Currently, 42 DCU academics and 100 PhD and postdoctoral researchers work within the Institute.

The Institute is led by Director Prof Dermot Brabazon, with support co-directors Dr Inam ul Ahad and Dr Tanya Levingstone.

The Institute’s cutting edge research focuses on four main areas:

  • Production Technologies
  • Product Design & Testing
  • Sustainable Engineering
  • Micro, Nano and Bio-Systems
Shows Dr Inam Ul Ahad speaking with attendees
Institute Co-Director Dr Inam Ul Ahad speaks with attendees. Credit: Kyran O'Brien

Work in each of these areas lends itself to collaboration with industry on wide range of projects and the wider Industry day event was designed to highlight the benefits of partnering with DCU APT, including state-of-the-art processing technologies and facilities, and world-class researchers to tackle industry challenges.

Following introductions by Prof Dermot Brabazon and President Daire Keogh, the day consisted of presentations from DCU APT researchers Dr Ronán McCann, Dr Rajani Vijayaraghavan, Dr Karsten Fleischer, Dr Mercedes Vazquez, as well as co-directors Dr Tanya Levingstone, and Dr Inam Ul Ahad. In addition there was an industry case study presentation by Declan Bourke of Fort Wayne Metals.

 

Shows Simon Coveney with Exergyn staff
Prof Dermot Brabazon (far right) with then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney and the Minister of State Dara Calleary on a visit of Exergyn's premises on the DCU Alpha campus in 2023. Credit: Kyran O'Brien

One of the key collaborations highlighted by Prof Brabazon on the day was the institute’s work with Exergyn. The DCU Alpha campus based business seeks to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by leveraging its world-class expertise in shape memory alloy (SMA) to enable commercial production of ground-breaking, clean energy products.

The key challenge was to Increase the efficiency of the company’s heat pump technology, to bring about wider application and higher rate of return for customers. To achieve this, DCU APT researchers implemented nitinol AM processing and heat treatment to increase the performance of the heat pump system.

Most recently DCU APT was awarded European funding for a project called A-SIDE, in which DCU leads nine EU country partners toward developing the next generation of DeepTech talent in advanced manufacturing and product design technologies.