EE & RINCE John Philip Holland Undergraduate Student Research Scholarship 2004

Ronan McKitterick and Gao Zhi

The 2004 EE & RINCE John Holland Undergraduate Student Research Scholarships were awarded to second year Electronic Engineering student Gao Zhi and third year Mechatronics student Ronan McKitterick. The students were presented with their awards by Mr. Jim Dowling, Head of the School of Electronic Engineering at a ceremony in DCU on June 11th, 2004.

At the award ceremony Professor Patrick McNally, Director of RINCE outlined the background to the John Holland Scholarships and explained what John Holland represented to the engineering community.

Though little remembered, John Holland (born in Liscannor in 1841) was one of Ireland's greatest engineers and inventors. He was a contemporary of the Wright brothers who did for aviators what Holland did for submariners. John Holland was educated by the Christian Brothers, where he received a solid grounding in practical subjects such as Science and Mathematics. He studied navigation with a view to a career at sea but his health ruled that he became a teacher. He taught in Ireland as a Christian Brother until 1872 and actually worked in the Albert College in DCU. In 1873 he was released from his vows and he emigrated to New Jersey. His interest in marine matters continued in the US where he took a very scientific approach to engineering at a time when apprentices were more inclined to achieve success by practical trial and error.

He drew up plans of submarines and, in 1879, with funds from Irish associates, built a small submarine which successfully operated submerged. He formed a company in 1895 and was awarded a contract to build a submarine for the US Navy. His first boat was a failure, but his second passed Navy tests. It had a gasoline engine for surface propulsion and an electric motor fed by storage batteries for power when submerged. The arrangement of tanks to be flooded to submerge the boat was similar to that used in modern submarines. His submarine was purchased by the US Navy in 1900. In 1914, just six weeks after his death a German submarine developed from Holland's work - the U-9-torpedoed and sank three British cruisers off the Dutch coast with the loss of 1,400 lives.

In the spirit of John Philip Holland Scholarship recipients will work closely with a member of academic staff on a research topic, designing a solution, and implementing that solution.

Gao Zhi will work on a research topic entitled `Design of dynamic simulator for the evaluation of microscale machines' under the supervision of Professor Charles McCorkell and Ronan McKitterick's work is entitled `Automatic Identification and indexing of Vehicle Registration Plates from CCTV' to be supervised by Dr. Noel O'Connor.