The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, has announced €5 million in funding under the latest round of the Irish Research Council (IRC)’s Enterprise Partnership Scheme and Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme. The programmes provide candidates with the opportunity to collaborate with an enterprise or employer on a research project of mutual interest.
Congratulations goes to 
Dr Niamh McCullagh, in collaboration with the Office of the State Pathologist for her project named, ‘Searching for Missing Homicide Victims: Developing a Data Driven Model’.
Working with Dr Cliona McGovern (Forensic & Legal Medicine, UCD) and Professor Linda Milligan (Office of the State Pathologist), this postdoctoral research aims to provide practical assistance to the Gardaí in the investigation of cases involving missing persons who are suspected of being victims of homicide in Ireland. This will be achieved by the refinement and further analysis of the created database of cases of disposal homicides. This will, in turn, contribute to a longer-term goal of creating a data hub of homicide and missing persons cases in Ireland at UCD and the Office of the State Pathologist. The research will analyse the patterns in homicide and missing persons in Ireland using a database which will be compiled as part of the work. The use of this comprehensive spatial data will inform investigators about patterns of disposal homicides in Ireland.
Congratulations to Dr Aidan O’Dowling, 
in collaboration with Breakthrough Cancer Research, for his project ‘Multiparametric analysis of the pancreatic cancer microenvironment in response to neoadjuvant therapy.’
Over 600 patients are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer annually in Ireland. In general, it has a poor outlook and is expected to become the second leading cause of cancer related mortality by 2030. This research aims to evaluate the biomechanics of pancreatic tumours and quantify the changes in these properties in response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients undergoing both diagnostic biopsy and/or surgical resection for pancreatic cancer will donate part of their tumour to research. The structural composition of these tumours will be examined and atomic force microscopy will be used to calculate stiffness values at the nanoscale. Finally, correlations between these results and patients' computed tomography images will be analysed via machine learning, known as radiomics. This translational research will provide a foundation for personalised cancer care for patients.
To find out more about the IRC’s Enterprise Partnership Scheme and Employment-Based Postgraduate Programme, see the UCD Research article here, which includes information about all 12 successful UCD awardees.