After submitting my PhD thesis in last February, I successfully defended my doctorate during my viva voce on the 1st May, 2024. The examination board was composed of the two examiners, Pr. Robert Marsh and Dr. Conor Cahalane, and the jury chair, Dr. Pauline Cullen. I would like to thank them. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Gerard McCarthy, for being a fantastic supervisor throughout my PhD.

I spend last Summer at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Scotland as a visiting PhD scientist working alongside Dr. Neil Fraser, a brilliant researcher with great knowledge of the European slope current and the Atlantic overturning meridional circulation. In July I had the opportunity to join a SAMS delegation of researcher, technicians and students to take part in the 2022 campaign of the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) whose primary aim was to turn around the main observing array of the ‘conveyor belt’ circulation in the subpolar North Atlantic.

The one-week long Aimsir/EirOOS survey ended a couple of weeks ago and was the first physical oceanography campaign of the new Irish Research Vessel (RV) Tom Crean. Our primary goal was to recover three moorings located southwest of Ireland, on an offshore underwater plateau known as Goban Spur. This campaign was carried out as a collaboration between three different ocean research institutions: 1) Maynooth University with scientists from the A4 project; 2) the Marine Institute; and 3) the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany (in German, Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie, or BSH).

From April 24th to May 6th, I took part in the Marine Institute Ocean Climate Cruise 2022 aboard the Research Vessel Celtic Explorer. This 2-week research cruise led by Chief Scientist Dr. Caroline Cusack aimed to measure water properties in the Northeast Atlantic. To do so we sampled 40+ water depth profiles from Ireland to the southern Rockall Plateau. The campaign was very successful.

Today (Nov 18, 2021), the A4 team hosted the A4 annual meeting and presented some of their latest research material. In the past year, our team has grown bigger and is now more than ever a very exciting environment to work in. Not everyone is there on this picture, but there is (from left to right): Levke Caesar (WP1), Niamh Cahill (WP2), Samantha Hallam (ROADMAP), Maeve Upton (WP2), André Düsterhus (WP2), Emma Worthington (NOC) (top row), Gerard McCarthy (WP1), Catherine O’Beirne (WP2), me (WP1), Zoe Roseby (WP3), Fermin Alvarez (WP3) (bottom row).