Congratulations to Subhash Chandra

Congratulations to Subhash Chandra who successfully defended his PhD thesis, entitled 'Towards Plasmonic Solar Concentration', on 30 April 2013. Subhash's main supervisor was Dr John Doran in the School of Physics at DIT, with associated supervisors at Trinity College Dublin (Dr Sarah McCormack) and at Imperial College London (Dr Amanda Chatten).

Congratulations to Antonia Bryan

The School would like to extend its congratulations and best wishes to Antonia Bryan, in the fourth year of DT235 Physics with Medical Physics and Bioengineering, on being selected as a Trainee Physicist in the UK NHS. Antonia's position is with Hull and East Yorkshire Teaching Hospital as a Trainee Clinical Scientist on the NHS Scientist Training Programme 2012.

Congratulations to Laurence Fitzpatrick

Congratulations to Laurence Fitzpatrick of DT227 Year 4 who has been awarded an IRCSET postgraduate scholarship with the Centre for Bio-Nano Interactions in UCD. Laurence took his undergraduate placement in the CBNI in 2011. The School would like to congratulate Laurence on his achievement. See Centre for Bio-Nano Interactions.

Congratulations to Dr. Niall Ó Claonadh

Congratulations to Dr. Niall Ó Claonadh who successfully defended his PhD
thesis on Thursday 22 March 2012. The title of his thesis was "The Safety
Concerns of Nanometals in Food Contact Materials: An Approach for Assessing
Material Safety and Nanotoxicity". The work was carried out in the DIT
Nanolab research Centre and was supervised by Dr Gordon Chambers and
co-supervised by Dr. Alan Casey.

Dr. Ó Claonadh was examined by Dr. Mark Auty from the Food Chemistry and
Technology Department in Teagasc and his internal examiner was Professor
Fiona Lyng of the DIT Radiation and Environmental Science Centre.'

Congratulations to Dr. Izabela Naydenova

Congratulations to Dr. Izabela Naydenova who has edited a new book on holography and its applications, which is published this month by Intech. The book presents a comprehensive survey of contemporary holographic research and applications with 16 chapters in each volume, all of them available through open access.

The two volumes are Advanced Holography - Metrology and Imaging and Holograms - Recording Materials and Applications

Congratulations to Prof. Toal

Congratulations to Professor Vincent Toal of the School of Physics and the Centre for Industrial and Engineering Optics. His book entitled "Introduction to Holography" has just been published through CRC Press.

See CRC Press for further details.

DIT RESC research is licensed to Irish start-up company

Hot on the heels of receiving Enterprise Ireland's 'One-To-Watch' award, Dr. Fiona Lyng of the DIT Centre for Radiation and Environmental Science has joined forces with Irish business to set up a spin-off company, Raman Diagnostics, to commercialise her research into the diagnosis of cervical cancer with Raman spectroscopy.

See Spectroscopy Europe.

Congratulations to Dr Barry Haycock

Congratulations to Dr Barry Haycock who successfully defended his PhD thesis today. The title of his thesis was "Calculation of the Electronic and Optical Properties of Nanoscale Systems" and the work was supervised by Dr Des O'Mahony of the DIT School of Physics and co-supervised in the USA by Prof James Lewis of the University of West Virginia, where much of the work was carried out.

Dr Haycock was examined by Prof Alexander Demkov of the University of Texas at Austin, and internally by Dr Aidan Meade of the DIT School of Physics

Congratulations to Dr. Leite

Congratulations to Elsa Leite who on Friday last successfully defended her doctoral thesis on Photopolymerisable Nanocomposites for Holographic Recording Applications. The external examiner was Prof. Yasuo Tomita of the Department of Engineering Science, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo. Dr. James Walsh was internal examiner. Her supervsiors were Dr. Izabela Naydenova , Prof. Vincent Toal and Prof. Svetlana Mintova (University of Caen).

Congratulations to Dr Chakrapani Meka

Congratulations to Chakrapani Meka who has successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Development Of Acrylamide Based Photopolymer For Full Colour Display Holography”. The external examiner was Professor Hans Bjelkhagen of the Centre for Modern Optics, OpTIC Technium, N. Wales. Dr. Siobhan Daly, Assistant Head of the School of Physics was internal examiner. Chakrapani’s supervisors were Dr. Raghavendra Jallapuram and Prof. Vincent Toal.

Congratulations to Dr Alanna Maguire

Congratulations to Dr Alanna Maguire who successfully defended her PhD thesis yesterday entitled "Solar Radiation Investigations - A Foundation Study".

Alanna's PhD work was supervised by Dr James Walsh and Dr Fiona Lyng in Focas. The external examiner was Professor Trevor J McMillan, Peel Professor of Cancer Biology at Lancaster University and the internal examiner was Dr Des O'Mahony.

Congratulations to Dr Mohammad Sultan Mahmud

On Friday 28th May Mohammad Sultan Mahmud today successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Thick photopolymer layers – step towards implementation of phase code modulated reference beam holographic data storage”.

His external examiner was Prof. Yvon Renotte, Department of Physics, University of Liege. Dr. Suzanne Martin, Manager IEO, was internal examiner. Mahmud’s supervisors were Dr. Izabela Naydenova and Prof. Vincent Toal .

Dr John Doran appointed Acting Head of Physics

Our congratulations and best wishes to Dr John Doran who has been appointed Acting Head of Physics. Dr Doran succeeds Prof Vincent Toal who is now Director of the IEO.

Congratulations to Dr Elizabeth Gregan

Congratulations to our colleague Dr Elizabeth Gregan who successfully completed her viva examination for PhD on Friday September 18th.

Congratulations to Dr Deirdre King and to Nitesh Pandey

Congratulations to Dr Deirdre King who has successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Development of renal phantoms for the evaluation of current and emerging ultrasound technology”. Her supervisor was Dr. jacinta Browne. Dr. Peter Hoskins of the University of Edinburgh was external examiner and Dr. John Doran was the internal examiner.

Congratulations also to Nitesh Pandey who has successfully defended his MPhil thesis entitled “Studies on recording characteristics of Si-MFI nanoparticle doped acrylamide-based photopolymer”. His supervisors were Dr. Izabela Naydenova and Prof. Vincent Toal. Prof. Werner Blau of the University of Dublin was external examiner and Dr. Fran Pedreschi was internal examiner.

IEO Researchers win top innovation prize

Dr. Suzanne Martin (manager IEO) , Dr. Izabela Naydenova (Lecturer in Physics), Dennis Bade (PhD student) and Prof. Vincent Toal (Head of Physics and Director IEO) have won the overall best invention prize in DIT Inventor’s Competition 2009 for their single beam holographic optical data storage system.

Seminar Thursday April 2 by Dr John R Thompson

Dr John R. Thompson of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Maine, USA who is a Fulbright Scholar at DIT this academic year will give a departmental seminar on "Investigations of student understanding of thermal physics beyond the first year" on Thursday April 2 at 1.10pm in KE1 002.

All are welcome.


"I will describe facets of an ongoing research project on the teaching and learning of upper-level (3rd-4th year) thermal and statistical physics; topics under investigation are often taught in both physics and chemistry modules. The major concept being explored in our work is entropy, both in the thermodynamic and statistical contexts. We find that while student understanding of entropy is improved during a module, difficulties with specific properties of entropy persist, especially with the state function property. Our research also deals with student functional understanding of mathematical concepts applied in these contexts (e.g., integrals, partial differentiation, probability distributions). Comparison of student performance on analogous physics and maths questions suggests a distinction between conceptual physics difficulties and difficulties with application of the underlying mathematics. "

Congratulations to Dr Laura Walsh

Congratulations to Dr Laura Walsh of the Physics Education Research Group in the School who successfully defended her doctoral thesis, entitled “A Phenomenographic Study of Introductory Physics Students: Approaches to Problem Solving and Conceptualisation of Knowledge”.

The examiners were Prof. Cedric Linder from Uppsala University, and Prof. Vincent Toal, DIT. Laura was supervised by Dr Brian Bowe and Dr Robert Howard.

Congratulations to Dr Luisa Simo

Congratulations to our colleague in the Department of Optometry, Dr Luisa Simo, who has been awarded a PhD from the University of Manchester.

See Luisa Simo Profile.

Congratulations to new Physics Professors

The school congratulates our colleagues Prof. Vincent Toal, Prof. Hugh Byrne and Prof. Pat Goodman for their recent well-deserved award of the title of Professor.