STAR Teachers
Monday 11 July 2005

STAR (Secondary Teacher Assistant Researcher) Programme – 2005 in the School of Electronic Engineering, DCU

Dr. Liam Barry (Radio Opticals and Communications Lab), Oliver Cosgrove (teacher from Terenure College working as SFI Assistant Researcher), Niamh Sullivan (from Mercy College, Coolock, working as SFI Assistant Researcher) and Professor Paul Whelan (Vision Systems Group)

Secondary school teachers, Oliver Cosgrove from Terenure College and Niamh Sullivan from Mercy College, Coolock are working as Assistant Researchers in two RINCE labs within the School of Electronic Engineering for the summer months. They are employed under the SFI (STARs) programme which aims to help teachers renew their interest in science and engineering and develop new skills so as a to enrich the teaching of maths and science at second level.

Oliver became more curious about communications technology when studying for a masters’ degree with Oscail and was keen to take it further. The project he is working on under the direction of Dr. Liam Barry in the Radio and Optical Communications Laboratory offers him the opportunity to do just that. He says ‘At the moment when information is sent over the Internet there is a mismatch in relation to the bandwidth of the optical fibre and the capacity of electronics to make decisions in routing that information to various destinations.

Dr. Liam Barry with his SFI funded STAR teacher Mr. Oliver Cosgrove

In particular, I am looking at the nature and properties of wavelength tuneable lasers, which would play an important role in efficient routing of information. At the moment switching decisions are made on the basis of IP address in the electrical domain, this project would envisage the wavelength of the light being used as one of the parameters to determine how the message is routed. This could remove the current electronic bottleneck when a routing decision is being made’.

Niamh is working on the area of colon cancer detection under the direction of Professor Paul Whelan in the Vision Systems Laboratory. Specifically, the lab is designing software, using 3-D imaging, to detect polyps of the colon at a pre-cancerous stage while concomitantly minimising the levels of radiation being used. Her aim is to explain this large project in terms that would be accessible and interesting to second-level students. She also hopes to make higher- level maths relevant to the student i.e. explain the role that mathematical formulae can create the 3-D images.

Professor Paul Whelan with his SFI funded STAR researcher Niamh Sullivan

Oliver and Niamh are building websites to use in their schools in an effort to raise genuine interest in the areas of Science and Engineering. Niamh, for example, says that cancer is now part of the STS (Science/Technology/Social) aspect of Leaving Cert Biology. The knowledge gained in Vision Systems Lab will enable her to explain more clearly how mutation occurs. Both of them appreciate that these placements have given them the time and space to research their areas of interest. They are very keen to pass their enthusiasm back to their students in September the scientists and engineers of the future.

See:
www.dcu.ie/electronic_engineering/
www.sfi.ie/home/index.asp
www.rince.ie/
www.vsg.dcu.ie/
www.eeng.dcu.ie/~opticlab/