13 Jun 2025 12:00
Significant planning efforts are currently underway for a large cohort of researchers and professional staff from TCD to undertake secondments in both the University of Wollongong and SCION as part of the DeMANS project. Over the course of about five months (July to November 2025), six different secondees with travel from Dublin.
Within this cohort, a total of seven secondments, to two different partners will take place.
Among these, two of our academic and researcher staff – Professor Larisa Florea and Professor Colm Delaney – will both travel to the University of Wollongong to link in with Professor Michael Higgins and Professor Gordon Wallace and their teams at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute.
Additionally, three doctoral candidates will spend a cumulative seven months in the University of Wollongong and a further one month at SCION. Teodora Faraone and Yekaterina Tskhe from Professor Florea's group will spend two and three months, respectively at Wollongong, between July and November 2025. Aoife Donohoe, from Professor Delany's group, will visit the University of Wollongong and SCION over the course of three months between August and November 2025.
While RISE programmes might traditionally have been considered the reserve of the research community, DeMANS has always had envisaged professional staff being fully embedded in the exchange and secondment programme. Consequently, Deirdre Caden, International Engagement Manager at CRANN and AMBER in TCD, will travel to the University of Wollongong in November 2025, with a view to strengthening research ties and looking at further funding opportunities for the consortium. There is also hope taht the currently-stalled Horizon Europe Associaiton discussions between the EU and Australia will have progressed somewhat by that point, allowing for potential exporation of new opportunities for funded research invvoling EU abnd Australian partners.
Later, Deirdre will also travel to SCION (in early 2026) to carry out a similar secondment in SCION – and planning of this is already underway.
Both during and after these secondments, further details of the activites and their outcomes will be posted on the website, so do please come back to check that!