Director
(opens in a new window)Eoin O'Neill was appointed as director of the Earth Institute in 2023. Eoin is Professor of Environmental Policy in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy and a Science Foundation Ireland-Funded Investigator in BiOrbic, Bioeconomy SFI Research Centre; a chartered planner with the Royal Town Planning Institute (MRTPI); and prior to being appointed at UCD he worked as a Technical Specialist in Flood Risk Management in the UK Environment Agency.
Eoin is an active researcher and seeks to advance research findings to inform policy, in Ireland and internationally. Eoin holds BA (Hons) and MRUP degrees, and a PhD in planning and economics. His research interests concern the interactions of people and the natural and built environments, under the broad themes of risk (perception and behaviour), and policy design (incentives and regulation of development). He is active on research projects across a wide range of areas, including, land use regulation, flood risk, groundwater, climate adaptation, and the bioeconomy.
(l-r) Meriel McClatchie, Eoin O'Neill, Conor Sweeney, Dublin 2023
Deputy directors
(opens in a new window)Meriel McClatchie is an Associate Professor at the School of Archaeology and a member of the Earth Institute since 2018. Her research focuses on ancient foods, farming and landscapes. She established an archaeobotany laboratory at UCD, where her research team examines the remains of plants recovered from archaeological excavations. Her collaborative research draws upon archaeological evidence for past farming and land-use systems to better understand how modern systems have emerged and how they can be adapted for a sustainable future.
(opens in a new window)Conor Sweeney is a Lecturer in Applied and Computational Mathematics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. His undergraduate degree was in Mechanical Engineering in UCD, and he went on to work as a design engineer in Italy and America. Conor then returned to Ireland to do a PhD in Trinity College Dublin in the area of Computational Fluid Dynamics. After this, he joined the C4I team in Met Éireann as a postdoctoral researcher in climate modelling. Conor’s research interests involve atmospheric modelling, and he has current projects in the areas of renewable energy and agricultural meteorology.