Profile

I’m a lecturer, so my work mainly involves preparing and delivering lectures to the undergraduate Physics students in Dublin Institute of Technology. Mainly I teach Medical Physics, which is the really exciting and broad area of how physics is applied in medicine. The students learn things like how X-rays are produced and used to form an image, how an MRI system works, how hearing aids work to improve hearing, how to design better prosthetic/replacement limbs for the future using new technologies like 3D printing. There is so much interesting science going on in this whole area that it’s hard to keep up, but really interesting. I also lecture in other areas of physics including Programming, where the students learn how to code and write their own simple programmes.

Another aspect of my job is doing research. Most of my research is in the field of optical sensors. A sensor is a device that responds to a stimulus – this can be anything, a chemical, a gas, a change in temperature. Think of the Carbon Monoxide sensors that you have in your home – they tell you in there is dangerous CO gas by beeping loudly. For my PhD I developed a sensor that responds to different types of gases in the air, as well as a pressure sensor. The pressure sensor is a hologram that changes colour when you press it. To make the sensor I use laser beams to draw or inscribe patterns in plastic films – the patterns are so small you can’t see them by eye. These days I’m working on sensors that can be used for medical applications in hospitals.