Silicon Republic's Women Invent Tomorrow's Campaign

An article citing Prof. Fiona Regan and the importance of the DCU Water Institute appears on the Silicon Republic website today.

Water was one of the hot topics in Ireland in 2014: flooding, metering and protests put H2O front and centre in the public consciousness.

But while water may be a hot potato politically, Prof Fiona Regan at Dublin City University wants to get to grips with the wider issues of water, from how technology can be used to monitor quantity and quality, to how research can help to inform policy and encourage consumers (both at home and in industry) to conserve this precious resource.

Prof. Regan is the lead principal investigator of the SmartBay Ireland project, a test and demonstration site in Galway Bay, and she directs the Marine & Environmental Sensing Technology Hub at DCU, that researches and builds technologies to monitor conditions in the sea, rivers and lakes.

“We do end-to-end technology development, where we translate the fundamental research of material science into technologies and information,” she explains, describing projects that use sensors and video to capture information about contaminants, ‘biofouling’, changes in water chemistry and early warnings of flooding.

“For several years we have deployed technology in Poolbeg (Dublin) to monitor water quality, and to develop algorithms for decision support  around flooding,” she says.

“We are also working with University College Cork (UCC) in the Lough Hyne marine reserve (in Cork), a beautiful site that could be used as a testbed for climate change monitoring because what is happening out at sea in the bay impacts the lake water, so we have been measuring changes in the lake in real-time.”

DCU is also heavily involved in the UNEP GEMS/Water initiative, which is led by UCC, and works with fellow partners Trinity College Dublin, NUI Galway and Irish Aid to help improve water monitoring in under-resourced regions.

“Part of our involvement in this initiative is to look at how we can monitor across countries that don’t do any monitoring currently,” says Regan.

For the full article, please go to: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/39948-wit2015