February 2015 Energy Night at NUI Galway

Ireland’s largest and longest-running student-run energy event will take place in NUI Galway’s Engineering Building on Wednesday, 11 February from 5-9pm. Now in its fifth year, the Energy Night is organised by the University’s Energy Society and this year the event will focus on smart grid and the growing technology and privacy issues associated with it.

Last year’s event ‘Energy in Ireland – Local Wellbeing, National Priorities, Global Challenges’ produced a very lively debate on the topic of wind farms and their impacts. This year will provide an even more topical discussion on Irish Energy.

Energy Night 2015, “Smart Grid, Pushing Technology and Privacy Boundaries” aims to discuss the progression of Smart Grid, Smart Meters and the Future of Energy Efficiency. After the dominance of the Internet of Things at the Consumer Electronic Show and also the data privacy controversy with Irish Water, this promises to be an innovative event.

A ‘Careers in Energy’ seminar will be held from 5-6pm. Several speakers from major energy companies such as Eirgrid, Arup and Accenture will deliver presentations on their current projects and various employment opportunities in Galway and Ireland.

The poster competition on the theme of ‘Energy, Environment and Sustainability’ will take place at 6.30pm and is open to all NUI Galway undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The evening’s main event, a panel discussion will take place at 7pm and feature speakers with backgrounds in ICT, Data Privacy and Energy all with the aim of exploring the future of Smart Grid in Ireland. The moderator for the panel discussion will be Dr Karlin Lillington, contributor to The Irish Times, The Guardian and Wired.com.

NUI Galway’s Dr Michael Schukat, an expert in network security and embedded systems, will provide the ICT expertise for the night, with Rónán Kennedy from the University’s School of Law providing context on how law and information and communications technology influence each other. There will also be a talk on an overall view of the future of Irish Energy and how Smart Grid will play an influential role in this. The discussion will include a lengthy Q&A session with active participation from the audience.

The event is free of charge and all are welcome. For updates follow the Energy Society on twitter at @nuigenergynight, on Facebook at NUIG-Energy-Society, or visit the website, http://www.nuigenergynight.com/.

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