Speaker Biographies

28th September

University of Limerick

University of Limerick, 28th September 2016

Speaker Biographies In order of appearance

Dr. Ken Byrne: Since 2008, Dr. Ken Byrne has been a lecturer in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Limerick. His research focuses on greenhouse gas balances, carbon sequestration in land use systems as well as carbon storage in harvested wood products, forest ecosystem services and nutrient stores in forest biomass. Dr. Byrne has been a significant contributor to both national and international climate change research having previously contributed to three IPCC reports and was a member of the IPCC team that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007. More recently, Dr. Byrne has been nominated as an International Expert for the UN Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) where he is a Lead Author for the thematic assessment on land degradation and restoration.

Dr. Eugene Hendrick: Eugene Hendrick graduated in forestry from UCD in 1975. He went on to complete a year’s postgraduate work before joining the Forest and Wildlife Service in 1976, where he worked in forest management and on research on plantation establishment, growth and yield modelling, and wood quality. He has a PhD in forest establishment and stability. On the setting-up of Coillte he worked in research, timber marketing and pension fund investment in forestry. He joined COFORD, the National Council for Forest Research and Development at its establishment in 1993. He was appointed Director in 1999, being responsible for the development and implementation of national forest R&D policy, funding programmes and related information transfer. Since re-joining the Forest Service in 2010 his areas of responsibility include the COFORD Council, forest genetic resources, forests and climate change mitigation, and forest product development and standards, including renewables.

Research Perspectives on the Optimal Use of Biomass

28th September

University of Limerick

Mr. Des O’Toole: Accomplished senior business development professional with a passion for renewable energy. Des has a clear commercial focus spanning a range of technical, business development, operational, sales & marketing roles over 23 years in the construction, wood panel board and renewable energy sectors. With responsibility for developing, leading and driving new business development opportunities and managing the commercial operations and logistics activities of Coillte’s biomass supply hubs. Coillte offers security of biomass fuel supply and its core expertise is in forestry logistics, harvesting, extraction and biomass delivery.

Dr. John Fitzpatrick: Dr. Fitzpatrick is a senior lecturer in Process & Chemical Engineering at University College Cork. He lectures widely to undergraduate, postgraduate, adult education and distance learning students. His research interests include sustainability and environmental protection, energy, and particle & powder technology.

Dr. Jean O’Dwyer: Dr. O’Dwyer is a postdoctoral research scientist within the department of Life Sciences at the University of Limerick. She holds an honours degree in Environmental Science and a PhD specialising in environmental modelling and public health. She has 5+ years’ experience working with environmental data and developing statistical models. Dr. O’Dwyer has collaborated with several research performing organisations including the HSE and most recently, along with Dr. Ken Byrne, has collaborated with the European Forest Institute in the application of the Tool for Sustainability Assessment (ToSIA). Her research interests are currently focused on the sustainability assessment of alterations to the Harvested Wood Product chain. In her spare time, Jean is a passionate science communicator, running a popular science blog called The Earth Story which has over 650,000 follows and won Best Education Blog in a worldwide competition in 2015.

Mr. Michael Clancy: Mr. Clancy has a BSc in Environmental Science and is currently a PhD student at UL. His research interests include the impact of afforestation on soil carbon stocks and investigating the greenhouse gas balance of Short Rotation Forestry via Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Other experience includes over twenty years working in the IT industry with large multi-national companies in Software Development and Project Management roles.

Research Perspectives on the Optimal Use of Biomass

28th September

University of Limerick

Dr. Thomas Cummins: Thomas Cummins studied forestry and archaeology, and teaches soil science at University College Dublin. His research builds on long-term ecosystem monitoring under the ICP Forests network, and is currently assessing the nutrient impact of increased biomass harvesting on Irish forest soils. ucd.ie/forsite

Professor Maarten Nieuwenhuis: Maarten Nieuwenhuis is Professor of Forestry and Head of UCD Forestry. He has an Ingenieur’s Degree from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands and a Masters and PhD from the University of Maine in the USA. He started working in University College Dublin in 1986. His main research interests include integrated and sustainable forest management, decision support systems and operations research in forestry, carbon sequestration, and forest operations analysis. Prof. Nieuwenhuis has published c.200 papers and book chapters, with c. 100 of these as peer-reviewed publications. He has a long experience in coordinating research projects and in managing research staff. In 2007 he was awarded the €5.0 million PLANSFM research programme by COFORD, as well as a work package in the CARBiFOR 2 project with a value of more than €1.2 million. Prof. Nieuwenhuis is a partner/work package leader in the FP7 projects INTEGRAL – Future-oriented integrated management of European forest landscapes (2011-2015) – and SIMWOOD – Sustainable innovative mobilisation of wood (2014 -2017), and in H2020 projects DIABOLO – Distributed, integrated and harmonised forest information for bio-economy outlooks (2015-2019) - and ALTERFOR - Alternative models and robust decision-making for future forest management (2016-2020). He was a member of the management committees of COST actions FP0603 - Forest models for research and decision support in sustainable forest management - and FP0804 - Forest management decision support systems (FORSYS) - and is now a management committee member of FP1207 - Orchestrating forest-related policy analysis in Europe. He is Coordinator of IUFRO Working Party 4.04.03 - SilvaPlan: Forest management planning terminology and is the Irish representative on the IUFRO International Council.

Research Perspectives on the Optimal Use of Biomass