ERBE CDT

Huge congratulations to our very first MaREI ERBE graduate, Dr. Nima Najafi Ziarani, who graduated from Munster Technological University, Cork,  on October 30th. 

Nima’s PhD thesis is entitled “Improving the Performance of Single-sided Natural Ventilation Using Airflow Guiding Components”  and his  supervisors were Dr. Paul O’Sullivan from MTU and Prof. Malcolm Cook from Loughborough University. The entire ERBE team would like to join Nima in expressing our gratitude to them for their invaluable support and guidance during Nima’s PhD journey. 

Nima has since taken up a new position in Industry and we wish him the very best of luck in the future. 

The ERBE Summer School took place in June in UCC and took the format of a series of workshops led by Prof. Brian Norton. The aim of the Summer School was to train the students in producing a paper provisionally entitled “Methodological challenges in research on energy resilience of the built environment.” 

Students reviewed the relevant literature to determine key issues that need to be considered to ensure methodologies used are fit-for-purpose.

If approved the resulting paper will be co-authored by all contributing workshop participants.

As part of the Summer School, the students also had a buildings tour of UCC and a visit to the LIR National Ocean Testing Facility in Ringaskiddy which was very informative for all attendees.

ERBE 2024 Successful Viva

We are also delighted to share that MaREI’s Orlaith McGinley of the University of Galway successfully defended her PhD thesis on ‘Retrofitting homes: Evaluating the householder’s retrofit journey, existing retrofit services and future directions for success in Ireland’s retrofit industry’.