School of Geography and the Environment

Ciaran is an EU-funded doctoral student and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early Stage Researcher in the School of Geography & the Environment. He holds a first-class BA (Hons) in Geography and a first-class MSc in Environmental Sciences, both from Trinity College, Dublin. Ciaran's early research concentred on sand dune features on Mars and the response of internal sand dune moisture and salinity to rainfall on the western Irish coast.

Prior to joining the DPhil programme, Ciaran worked as a Research Assistant with the Earth and Planetary Surface Processes research group at Trinity College, Dublin.

Awards and Funding

• 2017 - 2020: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (European Commission)

As an Early Stage Researcher and DPhil student, Ciaran works with the European Sand Mitigation along Railway Tracks (SMaRT) Innovative Training Network. The SMaRT consortium is a multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral research group with partners from the University of Oxford, Politecnico di Torino (Italy), the Optiflow Company (France), and railway engineering companies across Europe.

Ciaran's current research focuses on the assessment of windblown sand hazards in deserts and their effects upon desert railways. His work includes critically reviewing previous attempts to mitigate the effects of windblown sand hazards, designing field experiments and assessment methods for potential new Sand Mitigation Measures (SMMs), and the testing of regional climate models using field data and downscaling of these models to the local scale.

Additional Publications Header

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