William Ronan Tipperary First Prize At US Biomedical Conference

Winning Tipperary PhD researcher William Ronan

William Ronan, a Cloneen, Co Tipperary native and PhD student in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at NUI Galway, has won first prize in the PhD Student Paper Competition at the American Society of Mechanical Engineering Biomedical Engineering Conference, a leading US conference in the field of Biomedical Engineering and Bio-mechanics.

Currently in his third year of PhD research at NUI Galway while under the supervision of Dr Patrick McGarry, Mr Ronan has developed advanced computational models, that predict the active response of biological cells to different mechanical environments.

Mr Ronan’s prize winning paper entitled ‘Simulation of Stress Fiber Remodeling and Mixed-mode Focal Adhesion Assembly During Cell Spreading on Elastic Substrates,’ is indeed a testament to the exceptional talent being nurtured in Irish Universities presently.

Mr Ronan is funded by an Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) scholarship and his research is also supported by Science Foundation Ireland Research Frontiers Programme (SFI-RFP) and the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC).

We wish Mr Ronan every success for the future.

It should be noted that this is the second major International Award won by a member of Dr Patrick McGarry’s research group in 2011, with his PhD student Emer Feerick also winning first prize at the Annual Symposium on Computational Orthopaedic Bio-mechanics in the US last January.