Hello and welcome to everyone watching.
As this is UCD Earth Week we're very
lucky to be joined by Professor Tasman
Crowe, the Director of the Earth Institute.
Tas is going to tell us a little bit more
about the new UCD degree in
Sustainability. On the CAO the code for
this degree is DN240 but before we get
into that we would just like to learn a little
bit more about Professor Crowe. As
this is Earth Week, would you be able
to tell us something about the UCD Earth
Institute as well as your own research
interests? Hi. Yes. Good morning everybody.
As a researcher I'm actually a marine
biologist by background and I've been
doing that for more than 20 years now
and I'm really interested in how human
activities influence coastal marine
ecosystems and but actually nowadays I
rarely were just on marine biology these
days most of my work is is
interdisciplinary. So, for example, I'm involved in a collaborative project
called Eco-structure which involves
researchers in Ireland and Wales looking
at artificial structures in coastal
environments so things like sea defences
and harbour walls and things like that
and we're looking for ways to make
them better at supporting natural
communities of plants and animals.
For example by incorporating artificial
rock pools or more complex surfaces more
like natural rocky shores but as
well as ecologists like me it also
includes geneticists and oceanographers
and engineers and social scientists so
that we can grapple with the whole
problem including a close engagement
with the community groups on the coasts
to explore how society would respond to
the kinds of modifications we're
proposing and so that we can adapt our
design accordingly and that actually
is quite a good example of what the
Earth Institute is all about as well so
we aim to bring researchers together
from different disciplines to grapple
with environmental challenges and
propose workable solutions and a lot of
that is built around the kind
of community that you want to try and
create of researchers that they get to
know each other and are really excited
about working with each other to address
these kinds of challenges. That's very good, Tas. I think if this becomes a weekly
series we can call it the rocky shore show but it's great to know that
multidisciplinary background will kind
of like be focused on throughout the degree
and throughout the rest of the questions in this series.
