Siliconrepublic.com, Ireland’s leading technology news service, is currently spotlighting IT Sligo academic Dr Marion McAfee in its profile series “Women Invent Tomorrow”, which champions women’s role in science, technology, engineering and mathematicss (STEM).
With demand for STEM graduates growing steadily, she and her colleagues at the Institute are at the forefront of modern research and teaching methods that are transforming old outmoded notions of engineering and “science type” jobs as staid, messy and male by proving that careers now are digital-age, often ground-breaking and open to everyone.
“People think that engineering is heavy and dirty but it is the opposite of that, it is trying to make our environment and our lives and health better,” she says in the siliconrepublic.com article.
It highlights Dr McAfee’s role as principal researcher in “Bio-PolyTec”, an EU funded €1million collaborative project which is trying to pave the way for people to receive better and cheaper medical implants faster.
The research team, comprising partners in five nations, says greater use of bioresorbable polymer material is set to have a significant effect on modern medicine, with important benefits for patients and manufacturers.
The main obstacle to wider use of the material, however, has been high processing costs. Bio-PolyTec is developing monitoring and control techniques which will speed up processing methods and slash high rates of wastage of the costly material.
“I love learning in research and trying to piece things together in your head, solving problems,” she told siliconrepublic.com. “There are so many future challenges in the environment and transport and medicine, and personally I find it rewarding to be doing research to help make medical devices more available.
Dr McAfee lectures in the Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering and is also attached to IT Sligo’s new Centre of Precision Engineering, Materials and Manufacturing (PEM Centre). www.pemcentre.ie.
Read the entire article at http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/37975-wit2014
Dr Marion McAfee with the President of IT Sligo, Professor Terri Scott, and Mr Ray MacSharry, Chair of IT Sligo’s Governing Body, at the launch of Bio-PolyTec last February.