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PhD Complementary Skills Session: Lab greening – how you can play your part!
Friday, February 19, 2021 @ 10:00 am–12:00 pm
Lab greening – how you can play your part!
Una FitzGerald, Galway Neuroscience Centre, Founder – ‘Galway Green Labs’ initiative
Dr FitzGerald will share her motivation for getting involved in promoting and implementing green lab practices at first, within her own University in Galway, and then, across Ireland and Europe. She will describe the experience of recruiting researchers and technical staff to join a green team and how this idea has spread to other labs on-campus, eventually being adopted as a University Strategy for 2020-2025. Some recommendations on how young researchers might go through the same process, are provided. In the end, the talk should encourage anyone working within the Biomedical Engineering sector, to implement new protocols that will minimise the impact that their daily work has on the environment.
After completing a BE (Ind Eng) and MSc in Biotechnology at NUIG, Dr FitzGerald worked in the pharmaceutical sector for five years in France and the UK, before embarking on a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Following a brief spell in cancer research, on joining Prof. Sue Barnett’s lab in Glasgow Uni. she discovered her true passion – neuroscience and in particular, research on brain disorders including multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Since returning to the University in Galway, Ireland, Dr FitzGerald has built a track record in MS research, is a funded investigator in CÚRAM, the SFI Centre for Research on Medical Devices and is ex-director of the Galway Neuroscience Centre. She is the lead PI and Coordinator of a €3.9M EU-funded Innovative Training Network which is training 15 PhD students across Europe, with the aim of developing a novel device for treating the progressive phase of MS. In 2019 she led the CÚRAM lab to be the first in Europe to gain Green Lab Certification from My Green Lab and she now chairs a national working group on sustainable public sector labs. Dr FitzGerald’s talk will describe her journey from neuroscience research to climate activism.
This seminar will take place online using the GoToMeeting platform
