Claire O'Connell

Dublin

Freelance Journalist at Irish Times

PhD cell biology @Ucddublin, MSc Sci Comm @DCU, writes for @IrishTimes. Irish Science Writer of the Year 2016. Adj Prof @ucd_sbbs

Featured in: Favicon

irishtimes.com Favicon

siliconrepublic.com

linkedin.com

Articles

From hormones to lifting stones – studying complexities of strength training

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

Your PhD looked at how female athletes perform in elite sports – tell us more. We have done a lot of research with female rugby players, looking at training performance and coaching styles as well as the impact of factors like menstruation and using the contraceptive pill.
Scientists are very good at telling, very poor at selling

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

You help people to succeed in the European research system, how do you do that? We run training courses with researchers to help them understand the European framework programme, how they can best operate in Europe and how to write competitive proposals for their research. I work with one of my daughters, Sylvia. She is a policy analyst in Brussels. Last year we launched a course on getting ready for Framework 10, the upcoming EU framework that will fund research between 2028 and 2034.
Blockchain for better data handling in healthcare

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

You are giving a free talk soon in a pub in Dundalk about your research, tell us more. I’m one of the presenters at Pint of Science, which is where speakers give a short talk about their work in the pub. I’ll be speaking about blockchain, and how it can be used in healthcare. I’m doing my PhD in this area at the Regulated Software Research Centre in Dundalk Institute of Technology. It’s basically a platform that logs all the activity on that platform in a ledger.
Creating the best environment to stop cancer cells

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

You are a biologist researching blood cancers – when did you develop an interest in science? I grew up in Hungary, and when I was about 12 I read a book by the Hungarian Nobel Prize-winner Albert Szent-Györgyi, who discovered vitamin C. He wrote about how molecules regulate things, and that set my mind on biology. I also enjoyed hiking, and I originally wanted to be an ecologist or a forest engineer, but my parents didn’t think that was a good idea. So I went back to my molecules.
Delving into the power of DNA for patients

Mar 13, 2025 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

Your research focuses on genetics, what sparked your interest in this area? I’ve always loved learning. I think that’s from my Mum. In primary school in Co Waterford, she was my teacher for several years. Going to university, I wanted to study an area where there is a lot to discover, so I chose a degree in human genetics in Trinity College Dublin. What came after that? For my PhD I worked on a project called Target 5000, funded by the charity Fighting Blindness.
Putting seismic waves through their paces with machine learning

Feb 13, 2025 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

How did you get involved in research into earthquakes? In 2011, I left home in Newcastle, Co Down, to study chemical engineering at Imperial College London, but realised straight away I was not an engineer. I noticed that my friends were having a lot of fun on the geology and geophysics course. My mother is a geologist by training, it was in the background as I was growing up, so I made that switch across.
Human psychology: ‘Even being told you are old could affect things like blood pressure’

Jan 30, 2025 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

What inspired you to become a psychologist? My mum is a clinical psychologist, and my dad moved from clinical psychology into brain research. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a clinical psychologist, but when I got into my teens I thought maybe it wasn’t cool to do what your parents do and I chose to study history at college. I loved it, but I noticed that I was always really interested in the people in history, the effects that events had on them and why they made particular decisions.
Exploring the power of urban green spaces to connect

Jan 8, 2025 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

You are an environmental psychologist. What is that? Environmental psychology has been around for about 50 years. We are interested in how the world impacts us and how we impact the world. I am particularly looking at how our perceptions of climate change affect our health and wellbeing, and how to design environments that promote positive behaviours and outcomes for urban environments and communities. How did you get into this area of study? I started in sports psychology.
Decoding early signals to catch ovarian cancer sooner

Dec 11, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

Congratulations, you won the 2024 Irish Universities Association National Three-Minute Thesis competition, what was involved in that? It’s a competition where you stand up and explain your PhD research in three minutes to a general audience, using only one slide. I entered the University College Cork competition, which I thought was going to be very low-key, but it turned out to be quite a big event and I was shocked when I won.
‘Homeowners with solar panels could sell extra power to neighbours’: Examining local energy trading

Nov 13, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Claire O'Connell

How did you become interested in renewable energy research? I studied electrical engineering in India, and when it was time to choose a master’s degree, the Paris Agreement had just been signed. This inspired me to make a positive impact by helping people adopt renewable energy. So I focused my master’s in this area. Later, while working with the Energy and Resource Institute in India, I became fascinated by the concept of peer-to-peer energy trading, which ultimately motivated me to pursue a PhD.