Whitaker Research Day a resounding success

On Wednesday, April 13th, The Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change, NUI Galway held its first Research Day. The Research day covered topics such as environmental sustainability, gender equality, climate change, information management in the public sector and healthy societies. The first session of the day was a whirl wind tour of the activities across the Whitaker Institute clusters with 13 quick presentations that gave everyone a chance to see the breadth of work taking place in the Institute as well as illuminating where synergies exist across the clusters.  The other sessions of the day examined some of the institute projects in more detail, each session dealing with one of the three research themes of the institute: Sustainable & Inclusive Societies; Public-Sector Innovation & Reform; and Business, Innovation & Economic Development. The Public-Sector Innovation & Reform panel discussion provided a lively debate on information management in the public sector with institute members debating with Dr. Orlaigh Quinn, Head of the Expenditure Policy and Reporting & Government Reform Unit in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

The plenary presentation was given by Professor John Fitzgerald, Adjunct Professor of Economics, TCD and Chair of the Advisory Council on Climate Change. He gave an inspiring talk on tackling climate change and on moving to a low carbon Irish economy emphasising the fact that as a society we may have to either dramatically reduce our standard of living or find new ways of producing clean energy that will maintain living standards. He painted a research agenda in the area that many of the Whitaker Institute clusters could feed into. The research day also involved a poster display of on-going Institute research in the Hardiman Research Building foyer.  The posters really added to the proceedings and highlighted the quality of the work being undertaken by both students and staff of the institute. Suzy van Osch (SEMRU) won best PhD poster for her poster entitled “A Cross-Country Comparison of European Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Sustainablity in Aquaculture” and Eimear Morrissey (Health and Wellbeing) was awarded second best PhD poster for her poster describing a content analysis study of medication adherence Apps.