October 2011 NUI Galway PhD Student Wins Floating Wind Turbine Prize at International Conference

Ciaran Kennedy, a PhD student in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at NUI Galway, was recently presented with two prizes at the 30^thInternational Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OMAE 2011) held in The Netherlands.

Originally from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ciaran was presented with first prize for innovation, and second prize overall, in a floating wind turbine challenge, as part of a team of four international PhD students.

The challenge was organised by the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) and the International Network on Offshore Renewable Energy (INORE).

Congratulating Ciaran on his award, NUI Galway’s Professor Sean Leen, said: “Ciaran’s achievement is an example of high quality, innovative work starting to come to fruition at NUI Galway, in the area of materials for renewable energy devices. His research involves direct collaboration with EireComposites, an indigenous, university spin-out company, based in Furbo, who manufacture high performance engineering components from fibre-reinforced composite materials for the energy, aerospace, marine, automotive and other sectors. Ciaran is driven by a real commitment to renewable energy and sustainability.”

The topic of Ciaran’s PhD is ‘Fatigue of Composite Materials for Ocean Energy’, supervised by Dr Conchúr Ó Brádaigh and Professor Sean Leen, Lecturers in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at NUI Galway. Ciaran also presented a paper entitled ‘A study on the effect of seawater on the fatigue life of polymer composites for tidal turbines’ at the OMAE 2011 conference.

Ciaran has a strong interest in renewable energy and engineering design, having worked in the wind turbine industry in the US in the 1990s, whilst studying for his undergraduate engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo. Ciaran designed, manufactured and tested a 300W wind turbine for his final year project in the US and subsequently worked as a research test engineer in the US wind turbine industry. Since then, Ciaran also worked for nine years in the medical devices industry with Creganna, Galway.

-ENDS-