Profile

I live in Celbridge with my family where I grew up. I love baking and trying out new recipes. I think baking requires great science and engineering skills! I am a gaeilgeoir and I love translating things about space into Irish.

My favourite sci-fi movie is The Martian because it’s very realistic. But I also love Star Trek! I love travelling and seeing new places – and my job lets me do that!

I have always been fascinated by space since I visited NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at age 9. Since then, I have been there 10 times! When I saw the rockets and satellites there, I realised that I could have a career that involved asking questions about what is in space, and finding the answers by working with telescopes and satellites.

So I studied hard in school – I did Technology, Chemistry and Physics and loved them all. I was never very good at maths or physics but they’re my passions. I did the Physics with Astronomy and Space Science degree in UCD and it was an amazing 4 years. I never want to stop learning so I decided to apply to do my PhD. This means I get to learn every day for another 4 years!

I’m a PhD student in the University College Dublin Space Science group. This means that I do research every day – asking questions about space and trying to find answers.

My work involves two different projects – the first project involves working on Ireland’s first satellite, EIRSAT-1. EIRSAT-1 is a CubeSat, which means it’s about the size of a milk carton, and it will carry really cool Irish technology to space. We are a team of students working with the support of the European Space Agency’s Fly Your Satellite! Program and with the support of Irish space companies to get this satellite launched in 2020. I am responsible for the communications of the satellite’s information from the satellite to us on earth, and back. This involves using antennae and radio frequencies.

The EIRSAT-1 team at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC centre in the Netherlands

The second half of my PhD involves using a robotic telescope called Watcher in South Africa to study dying and merging stars. I look for signals from gravitational wave events that we can see with our eyes. Gravitational waves are like ripples in a pond, but they occur in space-time when two really heavy objects merge together. The waves stretch and compress space, and we can detect them here on earth. Now my job is to try to find these signals faster with our robotic telescope when the gravitational waves are detected on earth.

The Watcher Robotic Telescope in South Africa

EIRSAT-1 is split into separate parts called subsystems and each has a different job. For example, the Attitude Determination and Control subsystem is responsible for stopping EIRSAT-1 from spinning. The Electrical Power subsystem is responsible for giving power to each of the pieces of equipment on board.

If I won this money I would like to run an interactive exhibit where each of the subsystems is explained and there would be demonstrations of each of the parts of the satellite.