Collaborating  with Mathematicians

This week-long series of events running 28 April to 2 May shines a spotlight on the important research taking place across our university. At UL we are pushing the boundaries, creating new discoveries, and it is all for the greater good. The impact that our research can have on society can never be underestimated. Our researchers are working to help make our country, and our world, a more sustainable place, more inclusive and healthier, and all while striving to use smart technology for the betterment of all.In an everchanging world, we need to ensure that we prioritise research funding to allow us to keep our competitive advantage and to grow our economy. UL Research Week is a platform that allows researchers to showcase the diverse nature of our world-leading research to the wider community and the public. Research Week is underpinned by our research strategyWisdom for Action, whose mission is to build a vibrant community where research excellence is valued, supported and central to all facets of our organisation.I encourage you delve into the research being undertaken here in UL throughout the week as you uncover the innovative and impactful work taking place. #ResearchWeekUL #StayCurious

University of Limerick

Collaborating  with Mathematicians: Asking the right questions, getting the right answers.

Engineering Research Building and Millsteam Courtyard

Research Week 2025

UL Research Week 2025 showcases some of the ground-breaking research being undertaken in our university - research that is having an impact.

Collaborating with Mathematicians: Asking the right questions, getting the right answers.There is an increasing need to form successful interdisciplinary research partnerships. But this can be challenging giving the differing terminologies and philosophical approaches of increasingly specialised research disciplines.In this innovative format, researchers from University of Limerick’s Mathematical Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI) research centre will present a series of case-studies on their collaborations and then discuss them with their collaborators to explore what makes a successful collaboration.The session will be introduced and moderated by MACSI Co-director Professor Norma Bargary.The four case-studies of collaboration between mathematicians and other disciplines we will explore are as follows.Dr Shirin Moghaddam and Prof. Bill Watson will discuss their work on predicting the progression of prostate cancer.Dr Padraig MacCarron and Ms. Gaelle Clion will discuss their collaboration on networks of Early-modern, Medieval and Ancient Irish Narratives.Dr Helen Purtill and Dr. Ian Kenny will discuss their work modelling injuries in the Irish Rugby Injury Surveillance Project.Dr David O’Sullivan and Dr. Paul Maher will discuss their collaboration on attitude networks.This event may be recorded for future promotional use by University of Limerick.All venues are wheelchair accessible but should you have any specific accessibility queries, please contact us at: Research@ul.ie

Dr Shirin MoghaddamShirin Moghaddam is a Lecturer in Statistics and Data Science in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the University of Limerick. Shirin holds a BSc in Statistics and an MSc in Mathematical Statistics from the University of Tehran. She completed her PhD in Statistics at the University of Galway (NUIG) on developing Bayesian imputation approaches in survival analysis. Following her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Conway Institute at University College Dublin on an interdisciplinary project on developing prediction models for prostate cancer progression. She was a lecturer at University College Cork before taking up her current position at the University of Limerick. She is a member of Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI) and her primary research interests are Survival analysis, Bayesian modelling and Machine learning approaches, in particular, their applications in cancer research. She collaborates nationally and internationally on modelling time-to-event data and developing prediction models in medical research. She is the chair of the Young Statisticians Section of the Irish Statistical Association and also a member of Cancer Trials Ireland.

Prof Bill Watson UCDProfessor Watson received his PhD degree in Biochemistry from the Department of Biochemistry, University College Cork in 1995. He then undertook his post-doctoral research in University of Toronto and the Toronto General Hospital in Canada, before returning in 1997, to the Department of Surgery, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital as a college Lecturer in University College Dublin. He is now Professor of Cancer Biology in the UCD School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Head of Pathology and Director of the Biomedical Health and Life Science honours BSc programme. Apart from his undergraduate and post-graduate teaching responsibilities, he has an active internationally recognised research group. As a translational biologist based in the Conway Institute he utilises latest technologies to study cellular and molecular pathways and clinical collaboration through the Prostate Cancer Research Consortium (of which he is the lead PI) to expand the understanding of the initiation and progression of prostate cancer in order to identify diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic sites for manipulation.

Dr Pádraig MacCarronPádraig MacCarron is a researcher in complex networks in the Department of Mathematics &amp; Statistics at the University of Limerick. He has a BSc in Astrophysics from University College Cork. He obtained a PhD from Coventry University on comparing the structural properties of social networks in narratives. After this he worked in the University of Oxford on social networks in a large mobile phone database. He is a member of the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI), his research is interdisciplinary and has recently worked with colleagues in the Psychology Department on identifying polarisation in attitude networks, with the Law Department on criminal social networks and the Health Research Institute on trust partnership networks. His current work is on identifying structural properties of social networks in order to develop realistic models of social phenomena such as how communities form and fragment in social systems.

Ms. Gaelle ClionGaëlle Clion is a final year doctoral student in the School of English, Irish and Communication at the University of Limerick. Her thesis is focused on the study of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Irish bardic poetry, and its relation with philosophical and literary discourses surrounding poetry in medieval Europe in this period, with special focus on the circulation of ideas. This work started in the course of her Master's degree, completed at the University of Western Brittany, France, under the supervision of Dr Anna Matheson. Before this, she completed a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Rennes. She recently collaborated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gathering data on social networks and character interactions within the Ulster Cycle.

Dr Helen PurtillDr Helen Purtill is an Associate Professor in Statistics and Data Science in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Limerick. She is a member of the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI) and her research interests include latent class analysis, biases in observational longitudinal studies, modelling injury data in elite athletes, design and analysis of randomised control trials, reliability and validity analysis, systematic reviews and meta analyses.

Dr Ian KennyDr Ian Kenny is a professor of biomechanics, within the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences. He is Co-Director of the Sport and Human Performance Research Centre (SHPRC). He teaches biomechanics and musculoskeletal anatomy and specialises in applied sports biomechanics and musculoskeletal modelling. Ian has served on the editorial board for the journals Frontiers, and Sports Engineering, and the Scientific Committee for the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports. He is co-Principal Investigator for the Irish Rugby Football Union IRIS injury epidemiology project.Ian lectured previously at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown and was a member of the Sports and Exercise Sciences Research Institute at UU. He held a DEL CAST research fellowship with Ulster University and golf's R&amp;A, and he worked within the R&amp;D team for the R&amp;A Rules Ltd. in St. Andrews on the topic of biomechanical and modelling analysis of shaft length effects on golf driving performance.Ian's research interest include Injury biomechanics; Injury epidemiology; Rugby Science; Musculoskeletal modelling and computer simulation of movement; Sport and human performance; Effects of equipment parameters on golf performance and Sports Engineering.

Dr David O’SullivanDavid O’Sullivan is a Lecturer in Statistics and Data Analytics in the Department of mathematics and Statistics at University of Limerick. He is a member of the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry (MACSI) and his research interests include Complex Networks, Information Diffusion on Networks and Opinion Dynamics.

Dr Paul MaherDr Paul Maher is an associate professor in the department of Psychology at University of Limerick. His research interests are in emotions, attitudes, and political orientation. In particular, how epistemic emotions (i.e. emotions related to knowledge and sense-making) influence the political attitudes people hold, and how they can help foster identification with political groups or categories. The experience of disillusionment is a primary focus of his work. We conceptualize disillusionment as an affective response to events that challenge a person’s sense of meaning in life. He and his collaborators have shown that disillusionment is linked to political polarization and low meaning in life. And they have also demonstrated that disillusionment can lead to an increased tendency to engage in nostalgic reflection.His political ideology research focuses on investigating how attitude networks influence political identification. For example, public health attitudes increasingly became a more important predictor of behaviour as they formed distinct network clusters in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. His approach is to use bipartite network visualizations to map the structure of political ingroup attitudes. Through this work, he explores how group level emotions impact behaviour and susceptibility to misinformation.

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