Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED

Ireland is working toward sourcing 80% of its electricity from renewable sources in just six years. One of the key players in this mission is the Head of Engineering at EirGrid who is responsible for overseeing the delivery of critical grid infrastructure. In this podcast she shares experience on the complexities of integrating renewable sources like wind and solar into the grid, about balancing supply and storage solutions, plus technical and regulatory hurdles that engineers must navigate. She also speaks about the challenges she has had to face personally as an engineer in this role.  Listen now to get a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of Ireland's power grid and our transition to renewable energy. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUTThe role of Head of Engineering at EirGrid Do we have a creaking old grid? Problems storing energy from renewable sources Moving energy across long distances The planning system Challenges she is facing in 2025GUEST DETAILSLouise O’Flanagan is the Head of Engineering and Asset Management at EirGrid, a Fellow of Engineers Ireland, and a leader with two decades of experience in the field. With her long experience connecting customers such as wind farm developers to the national grid, she possesses a deep understanding of the intricate workings of the power system and the challenges of integrating renewable energy sources.Louise on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-o-flanagan-3a12ba3a/EirGrid Website - https://eirgrid.comMORE INFORMATIONLooking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/   Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.QUOTESLeadership is one part of project management. Leadership is about getting people to buy into what you want to deliver and to want to help and assist you in that.There is definitely a shortage of female engineers in Ireland. 23% of engineers coming out of university are female and that drops to about 12% actually entering into the workforce. EirGrid have a very active graduate program where you'd see 50% of our graduates are female.As an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper. But unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders, that may be where that plan will stay. On paper.It's what a lot of engineers’ face when they're delivering infrastructure projects. First, you need to explain what the need of the project is, but then also listen and take on board that feedback. You must engage with the community.KEYWORDS#engineering #renewable #grid #womeninengineering #eirgrid 

Engineering innovation has created incredible technology and found new ways to use current technology to overcome engineering challenges. LiDAR is an example of one of these revolutionary tools and today we hear from an art historian turned civil engineer who is using it to scan our cities. We hear about their creation of the world's densest urban aerial laser scanning dataset, which was conducted using a large slice of the center of Dublin City, and the challenges they’ve overcome in transforming how we understand, plan, and protect our cities.Our guest is a pioneering force in urban data science and has authored over 160 peer reviewed publications, been awarded four patents and worked as a professor in UCD Dublin. She is Professor at New York University's Center for Urban science and Progress, Dr. Debra Laefer. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUTUsing LIDAR technology to create highly detailed 3D scans of citiesDeveloping methods to efficiently store, process, and analyze LIDAR data How 3D scans are revolutionizing urban flood modeling and emergency responseApplying the LIDAR data and 3D models to real-world engineering challengesExploring the use of 3D printing technology in conjunction with LIDAR dataGUEST DETAILSWith degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (MS, Ph.D.), NYU (MEng), and Columbia University (BS, BA), Prof. Debra Laefer has a wide-ranging background spanning from geotechnical and structural engineering to art history and historic preservation. In her decade and a half as a faculty member in both the US and Europe, Prof. Laefer has served as the principal investigator for grants from a wide range of sponsors including the National Science Foundation, the US Federal Highway Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Science Foundation Ireland, and the European Research Council (including a €1.5 million single investigator award from the flagship ERC program for which she is the only civil engineer to have been funded in Ireland in the program’s 11 year history).Prof. Laefer has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications, been awarded 4 patents, and has supervised 15 doctoral and 20 Masters theses. Among many honors from IEEE, ISPRS, and other professional societies, the most notable is perhaps the 2016 commissioning and hanging of her portrait by the Royal Irish Academy as one of eight researchers selected for the Women on Walls project to celebrate Irish women in science and engineering. https://www.linkedin.com/in/debra-f-laefer-09510a11/ MORE INFORMATIONVideo mentioned in the podast of High Density Laser Scanning (LiDAR) Data Dublin is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEi2Wo7BcukLooking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/   Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.QUOTESWe didn't devise a sensor, we didn't even improve the sensor, but we took a fundamentally engineering approach to it. We took this more systematic approach of; let's reverse engineer the process, figure out what we want to get and figure out how to use the sensor to obtain that data. - Dr. Debra Laefer This technique has been used in fields as far from civil engineering as breast cancer research. So that not only has it been transferred to other LIDAR applications, but people have used it for other remote sensing and medical imaging datasets. - Dr. Debra Laefer It's good to make mistakes, and it's good to have senior engineers check them. - Dr. Debra LaeferAs crazy as your idea may seem, a lot of the time the best ideas are initially too far ahead of the curve, so don't give up on them. - Dr. Debra Laefer KEYWORDS#buildings #data #dublin #engineers #civilengineering #lidar #computationalmodel

Engineering is a diverse and exciting career that fosters immense creative thinking, but just how far can it take you? Today we hear from an engineer who turned their wildest dreams into reality and took them all the way to NASA. We hear how an opportunity to attend Space Camp inspired their ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude and how engineering has supported further creative pursuits in different disciplines. Our guest is a trailblazer in the aerospace engineering industry, but also in promoting the idea that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. She is Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, Sinéad O’Sullivan. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUTEarly experiences that foster a ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude The impact of surrounding yourself with inspiring peopleMission design and AI at NASAParallels between engineering and other creative pursuitsThe role of AI and automation in the future of engineering GUEST DETAILS Sinéad O'Sullivan is an Aerospace Engineer. She formerly led strategy at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness with Professor Michael Porter and is currently a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. Formerly a Research Fellow at MIT’s College of Computing and MIT Sloan as well as a Human Spaceflight mission designer for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology, innovation, geopolitics, and national security. She sits on the board of the European Space Policy Institute, is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, and is Board Member of IMMA - the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She was also recently nominated as a fellow of Engineers Ireland. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sineadcosullivan MORE INFORMATIONCome meet the Engineers Ireland Team at the National Ploughing Championships on September 17th to 19th and have a blast at our Space Station. We will have three incredible experiences at the Engineers Ireland 'Space Store', ran by former NASA Engineer Steve Ringler - who will be down at the Ploughing Championships with our team.  You can immerse yourself in the cosmos with virtual reality adventures using state-of-the-art headsets, try on a replica spacesuit, or get a hands-on experience with real space rocks, including pieces of the moon. Join us at Block 2, Row 11, Stand 169 for an unforgettable journey through space and engineering. Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/    Sineads book “Good Ideas and Power Moves” is due to be published September 2025.  Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland. QUOTESI got to spend time with the engineers at NASA, and it just put this very kind of human, normal person face on this career that seemed totally inaccessible. - Sinéad O’Sullivan  There are a ton of really smart engineers that are solving these problems at any given time. But the problem really, I think, lies with the bureaucracy of how we fund science, how we create policy around that. - Sinéad O’Sullivan I feel like to be creative, you have to let that child part grow up with you, like if you really want to be good at doing these types of jobs, don't let people tell you they're dumb ideas. - Sinéad O’Sullivan To be a great engineer, you need to be around great engineers. - Sinéad O’Sullivan My entire career has been curiosity driven for the simple reason that if I'm really interested in it, I'm going to work hard enough at it to be successful in it. - Sinéad O’Sullivan Engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, and difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career. - Sinéad O’Sullivan KEYWORDS#engineering #nasa #career #space #mission #taylorswift #robots

One of the biggest challenges of the climate crisis is power. How do we harness it, store it, use it and most importantly, make it more sustainable. Engineers have been creating fantastic solutions in power, but storing it is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. Today we hear from an Irish engineer who is actively responding with some very clever solutions.Our guest has worked with decarbonization at EU level and is leading his own social enterprise that creates energy storage solutions for homes, farms and small businesses. He is co-founder and Director of Range Therapy Eamon Stack.  THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUTA new way of thinking about power supply and storage Second life batteries and how they can be utilised Using battery stored power in buildings, businesses, farms and home Creating a circular recycling programme for batteries in Europe Storing wind and solar power in batteries for cost effective power GUEST DETAILSEamon Stack is an award-winning serial social entrepreneur. He co-founded Range Therapy in 2020, responding to the climate change crisis by focusing on reducing energy emissions, one of the big three human causes. Range Therapy offers second-life EV battery packs to upgrade older EVs and to offer substantial energy storage solutions at an affordable price for homes, farms and small businesses.Eamon’s background is in software engineering, with 35 years development experience in the nonprofit sector. He was founder and former CEO at ENCLUDE for 18 years. This charity is focused on building the ICT capacity of the Irish Charity Sector. https://ie.linkedin.com/in/eamon-stack-25a3242 https://rangetherapy.org/ MORE INFORMATIONLooking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/   Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.QUOTESAfter high powered use of a battery in a car for 15 or 20 years, they have another 20 years of life available to them as energy storage. - Eamon Stack That's what's wonderful about the transition from an energy system where we just burn and waste fossil fuels to one that is perfectly circular and completely sustainable. This is really very good news for everybody in the system. - Eamon Stack The Environmental Protection Agency might view a second life battery out of a car as a hazardous waste. That's a problem we need to deal with, this is a national asset. - Eamon Stack It's a whole new world, and it's an exciting new world where there's a potential. The Holy Grail here is storage, we make tons of power, where can we store it at a price that makes sense. - Eamon Stack KEYWORDS#batteries #energy #cars #electric #engineers #grid #power #recycling #sustainability