Post Doctoral Researchers
Dr Louise Deering, UCD
Louise is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the molecular microbiology group in the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, University College Dublin. She is a member of the Marine Biological Association (MBA), Society of General Microbiology (SGM) and Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM).
Louise completed her PhD on the microbial ecology of Irish peatlands in 2010 from the School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin. Her PhD examined complex microbial community structures within the four peatland types in Ireland through molecular based methods and univariate and multivariate statistical analysis. This work was part of the EPA funded project BOGLAND, set up to develop a protocol for the sustainable management of peatlands in Ireland.
Within the INTERREG-IVA (Ireland/Wales) project “Smart Coasts = Sustainable communities”, Louise will assess microbial communities with particular emphasis on microbes associated with faecal contamination within Irish bathing waters.
Dr Zeinab Bedri, UCD
Zeinab is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Water Resources Research, University College Dublin. Zeinab completed her PhD studies as part of the multi-disciplinary INTERREG III-A project in which she constructed a three-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality model of the Liffey Estuary and Dublin Bay as a tool to assess the compliance of the coastal waters with the environmental limits of the EU Bathing Water Directive under various discharge and weather conditions.
She is currently working as part of a research team to construct an integrated catchment and near-shore coastal model for the Dargle catchment and Bray beach, Co. Wicklow in order to assess the bathing water quality. The work also comprises collection of hydrodynamic and water quality data to enable the calibration and verification of the catchment and coastal models.
Dr Sangaralingam Ahilan, UCD
Sangaralingam Ahilan is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Dooge Centre for Water Resources in the School of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University College Dublin. Ahilan was awarded his primary degree (Civil Engineering) by the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in 2005. In 2008, he graduated with a Masters degree from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Ahilan's PhD was awarded in 2011 and funded through the Irish National Flood Studies Update Programme, investigated the floodplain influences on flood estimation procedures.
Ahilan is currently working on a risk based statistical method for discounting of poor quality bathing water samples that is permitted in the new EU Bathing Water Directive. The new directive requires that bathing water be monitored over a 4-year period. Within this period, 15% of samples can be discounted. Ahilan's work will advise Local Authorities whether a sample recorded at a particular time, is likely to be in the worst 15% of water quality samples in the 4-year period.
Dr Moises Sanchez, UCD
Moises is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science & Informatics, University College Dublin. He received a 5.5 years grant from the National Council of Science (CONACYT), Mexico to study a Masters Degree in Digital Signal Processing at the University of Guanajuato and subsequently completed his PhD in Systems Engineering at Cardiff University. During his PhD Moises developed new algorithms for Data Mining applications using the Fractal Dimension. The algorithms find groups of instances and useful features in benchmark and real application datasets, in a supervised and unsupervised fashion.
Moises is currently working with Professor Gregory O'Hare on the development of the wireless sensor network of the Smart Coast Project at CLARITY: Centre of Sensor Web Technologies. The work comprises the effective sensing and processing of data to minimise the energy consumption on sensor networks for time series forecasting.
Dr Marcos Xose Alvarez Cid, UCD
Marcos is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, University College Dublin, where he is currently working under the supervision of Professor Gregory O'Hare on the design and development of middleware to support the management of a network of environmental sensors for the Smart Coasts project.
Marcos received his MEng in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Vigo (Spain) in 2005, followed by an MSc in 2009 and PhD in 2011 in Environmental Technology at the University of Vigo. Following a number of years employed as a software engineer, Marcos worked between 2007 and 2012 as a Research Fellow in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering of the University of Vigo. During this period his research interests focused on environmental applications, covering subjects including computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition, with particular focus on texture analysis, and 3D representation. In the 2011-2012 academic year Marcos also collaborated with the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation of the University of Vigo as an Assistant Lecturer in Digital Control Engineering.
