iCRAGs Geoscience for Sustainability PhD programme was launched in 2022 which resulted in the recruitment of over 30 new PhD researchers. iCRAG is delighted to welcome the next generation of researchers who will be future leaders in delivering innovative science and technologies to better understand our planet, sustainably manage our natural resources and protect the environment.

Kevin McGraw (UG)

Project title: The Role of Upper Ocean Turbulence on the Biological Carbon Pump

Kevin has a background in aerial and marine survey using remote sensing technologies. He graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York with a Master's in Mechanical Engineering in 2018. Between then and 2022 Kevin was employed in various airborne survey projects using digital photography and lidar including efforts to assess storm damage, coastal erosion, underwater vegetation, marine wildlife distribution, and gravimetry. He has experience in operating autonomous underwater vehicles AUVs using side-scan and multibeam sonar to map the ocean floor and locate wrecks. Most recently, he started PhD studies in the department of physics at the University of Galway in October 2022.

Clara Crowell (UCD)

Project title: DRIFT: Refining Ireland's glacial history to de-risk mineral exploration

Clara received a BA in Geosciences from Trinity College Dublin in 2022 and briefly worked as a geologist in Canada for Equity Exploration. Now she is pursuing a Ph.D. in applied geosciences at UCD under the supervision of Sam Kelley. Constraining the properties and behaviors of past ice sheets provides crucial information for the numerical modelling of ice sheets and sea level rise. Glacial landforms can be used to infer past ice sheet behavior and conditions, as well as provide information on thickness, flow direction and velocity. This project uses glacial land forms to investigate landscape evolution to refine Ireland's glacial history and improve mineral exploration techniques.

Prithwijit Chakraborti (UCD)

Project title: Subsurface improved characterisation by incorporating geometric and petrophysics bounds into geophysical inversions to support mineral exploration in Limerick basin

Prithwijit Chakraborti is a PhD researcher in iCRAG at University College Dublin. He is an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postgraduate scholar. His research focuses on 3D modelling of volcanic rocks in the Limerick Basin subsurface using geophysics and petrophysics. Prithwijit graduated from Fergusson College, Pune (India) in 2017 with a BSc in Physics and earned a degree of MSc. Tech in Applied Geophysics from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad (India) in 2021.

Vincent Adongo (UCD)

Project title: A three-dimensional segmented fault zone model

Vincent Adongo is a PhD student currently at the University College Dublin. He has a bachelor’s degree in physics with a specialisation in Geophysics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, Ghana. He continued his master’s degree in Geophysics from the same University and won lots of laurels. These include AAU internship grant in 2017, a meritorious Graduate Assistantship position in the 2017/2018 academic year during his postgraduate studies in Ghana. He was awarded several scholarships and fellowships including the ICCR scholarship, Study in India scholarship and IISER-Kolkata fellowship, all in the year 2020. He was a project student in India and worked on a project in computational mineral physics where he gained adequate research experience in understanding the lower mantle mineral composition. He was awarded the SFI-Centre for Applied Geosciences Scholarship in 2022 as a PhD candidate in Ireland. He has gained a lot of experience working with people from different cultural diversities. His current project focuses on building a 3-dimensional segmented fault zone model with Tom Manzocchi being the lead investigator.