iScholars

iScholars

Sustainability Innovation Leaders Of Tomorrow

iScholars will be the catalysts for navigating the transition to a sustainable future, through exceptional research, strategic vision, innovative mindset and the courage to challenge conventional practices.

What makes an iScholar unique?

iScholars will participate in a rigorous and exciting immersion into the worlds of entrepreneurship and innovation, in parallel to their doctoral research. Through immersive learning, real-world projects, and global collaboration, iScholars build the skills, mindset, and networks to shape what’s next. This is more than a qualification — it’s a launchpad. Graduates leave with leadership experience, a lifelong community of mentors and peers, and the confidence to create change wherever they go.

Transforming the world through sustainability innovation, one PhD at a time

Meet The iScholars

iScholars will be at the forefront of Ireland’s transformation towards a more sustainable future. Their focus will be on developing effective solutions that bring benefits to people and the environment.

Ireland

Adam Dunne

Theme: Sustainable food and nutrition solutions 

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India

Ajai Sankar

Theme: Advanced green manufacturing - workplace of the future 

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United Kingdom

Ben Bond

Theme: Impact of emerging digital technologies on human experiences 

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Ireland

Blánaid Fogarty

Theme: Clean tech, energy solutions and energy resilience

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Iran

Fateme Saaditanavaz

Theme: Sustainable food and nutrition solutions 

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Ireland

Gavin Chapman

Theme: Advanced green manufacturing - workplace of the future

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Ireland

Jennifer Hynes

Theme: New models of healthcare 

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Denmark

Louise Frost

Theme: New models of healthcare 

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Ireland

Maisie McDavid

Theme: Sustainable water, land use and natural resources management​ 

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Indonesia

Michael Hananta Utomo

Theme: Green materials and the circular economy

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Ireland

Patrick Perrem

Theme: New models of healthcare 

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Eligibility

iScholars are selected from an international pool of distinguished candidates. In addition to demonstrating academic excellence, a proven entrepreneurial mindset, outstanding leadership qualities and a passion for sustainability, prospective candidates must meet the following criteria.

Applicants who are currently enrolled in undergraduate degree programmes must be on track to successfully complete all degree requirements before August 1 of their Innovate for Ireland enrolment year. There are no requirements for a specific field of undergraduate study; all fields are welcome, but it is important for prospective candidate to demonstrate their passion for sustainability and entrepreneurship.

Applicants must demonstrate strong English skills, as all teaching will be conducted in English. If the applicant’s native language is not English, official English proficiency test scores must be submitted with the application. This requirement is waived for applicants who studied at an undergraduate institution where the primary language of instruction was English for at least two years of the applicant’s academic programme. The requirement will also be waived for applicants who have studied in English for two or more years at a Master’s degree level or higher. Acceptable test options are: Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Minimum score 100. International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Minimum score 7. Cambridge English: Advanced (C1) or Cambridge English: Proficiency (C2). Minimum score 185. Duolingo English Test. Minimum Score 130.

Applicants will need to have entrepreneurial capacity and interest along with outstanding research ability and academic credibility. In their application, applicants will be expected demonstrate their interest in entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership and how they will use the opportunity of Innovate for Ireland to further their research and career.

Take your career to the next level

Join a global community of sustainability innovation leaders that will shape the future

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Adam Dunne, Ireland

Theme: Sustainable food and nutrition solutions

Adam’s project aims to improve the sustainability, efficiency, and overall productivity of the Irish sheep sector by exploiting genomic information on 60,000 animals with the goal of improving lamb growth rates.

Sheep farming is the second largest Irish agricultural sector in terms of farm numbers with over 34,000 flock owners. Increasing the profitability of the sheep sector will ensure the sustainability, and therefore increased job security, for both individual producers and associated industries.

Ajai Sankar, India

Theme: Advanced green manufacturing - workplace of the future

Ajai is a materials scientist who is interested in improving manufacturing processes and efficiencies. In manufacturing, lasers are used for fabricating complex material structures – Ajai’s project focuses on innovative approaches to reduce laser power requirements, leading to cost savings and shorter manufacturing lead times.

The technologies he will use can produce shaped high performance components, while minimising overall energy consumption and material wastage compared to conventional manufacturing methods.

Ben Bond, UK

Theme: Impact of emerging digital technologies on human experiences

Ben’s project aims to develop AI-driven and smartphone-enabled digital health tools for individuals experiencing psychosis-spectrum conditions.

By leveraging advanced AI techniques to map psychological risk profiles, Ben’s work directly addresses Innovate for Ireland’s commitment to pioneering scalable solutions that improve public health outcomes in Ireland and beyond.

Blánaid Fogarty, Ireland

Theme: Clean tech, energy solutions and energy resilience

Blánaid’s research focuses on the optimisation of inkjet printing of nanoparticle-based inks for creating flexible electronics and battery components. Furthermore, her research can be applied to ‘green inks’ which are produced from non-toxic, sustainable materials and using methods which would reduce the overall carbon footprint of the process, improving the sustainability of it even further. Blánaid’s research has implications for various technologies, such as wearable devices, printed flexible biosensors and environmental monitors and thin film printed batteries for energy storage devices.

Fateme Saaditanavaz, Iran

Theme: Sustainable food and nutrition solutions

Fateme’s research project addresses three interlinked topics related to sustainability in the marine environment and food industry:

  • Sustainable food and nutrition solutions. Her research hopes to develop a high-quality alternative protein, from microalgae, for use in fish farming. The protein can be used to replace fishmeal, thus reducing overfishing and contributing to a healthier marine environment.
  • Sustainable water, land use and natural resources management. The microalgae Fateme is interested in can also be used for the treatment of wastewater (or concentrated sludge) from fish farming, thus contributing to a more sustainable and circular aquaculture industry.
  • Green materials and the circular economy. Finally, the microalgae can be used to recycle nutrients in fish farm wastewater. They can absorb nutrients from fish farm wastewater, resulting in clean water that can be reused. The microalgae biomass can then also be used for fish feed.

Gavin Chapman, Ireland

Theme: Advanced green manufacturing - workplace of the future

Gavin’s research focuses on developing a system that incorporates in-situ sensors to monitor and control defect formation during the additive manufacturing (AM) process, this research directly addresses key challenges in precision and quality control in AM. The insights from this research have cross-industry relevance, particularly in sectors such as aerospace, robotics, and biomedical engineering, where it is essential to be able to develop lightweight, adaptive and complex components.

The project strengthens Ireland’s role as a leader in next generation manufacturing, ultimately driving forward sustainable innovation in high-tech industries and positioning the country as a hub for cutting-edge, smart manufacturing technologies.

jennifer

Jennifer Hynes, Ireland

Theme: New models of healthcare

Jennifer’s project is focused on cystic fibrosis (CF). It aims to improve individual patient treatments, by creating tools that can assist in the diagnosis, monitoring and prevention of CF. The project will take ‘omics’ data (genetic, protein, metabolites) from a large number of patient samples and combine the data with health record information to create individual patient ‘CF digitomes’. The digitomes can then be used to guide ongoing care for patients and understand how they respond to new and existing therapies for CF.

This project is in collaboration with Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) hospital at Crumlin where Jennifer and other members of the research team are based.

Louise Frost, Denmark

Theme: New models of healthcare

Louise’s project aims to advance the use of light-based technologies (known as photonics) and nanomaterials in the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. Photonics holds great promise for non-invasive healthcare applications. However, one of the main challenges is that light cannot easily penetrate deep into the body, limiting its use for diagnosing or treating internal organs.

To address this, Louise is developing a new method using specially designed nanoparticles that help light reach deeper areas of the body, enhancing the effectiveness of light-based diagnostics and therapies.

Through this work, she will gain hands-on experience in combining photonics and nanotechnology, helping to tackle one of the key barriers in light-based medicine. In the long term, the insights from her project could make light-based technologies more practical and powerful tools for improving patient care.

Maisie McDavid, Ireland

Theme: Sustainable water, land use and natural resources management

Maisie’s PhD project is focused on sustainable land, water and natural resource use, across the whole island of Ireland. Conflicting demands on land use and resources results in challenges in encouraging land management that is sustainable and mindful of climate change. Maisie is based at the Co-Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Water, and does research on policy and governance related to land and resource usage. 

By working with stakeholders to understand challenges and opportunities related to policies and regulations in these areas, it may be possible to encourage more sustainable management practices that meet the needs of everyone, now and into the future.

Michael Hananta Utomo, Indonesia

Theme: Green materials and the circular economy

Michael’s project aims to investigate the development of a combined anaerobic fermentation and microalgae process that can be used to convert dairy waste, such as cheese whey, into chemical building blocks, including biobutanol and volatile fatty acids, for various commodity and industrial products, as well as into biomass for bioenergy generation. His project will address the current technical barriers associated with applying fermentation and microalgae processes to treat dairy by-products, such as cheese whey.

A “systems-based” approach, using production process simulations, will be applied to identify bottlenecks in the process and develop bench experiments to get past these bottlenecks.

A novel production process will be developed for getting added value from dairy by-products, and its technical feasibility, major cost drivers and commercial scalability will be evaluated.

Patrick Perrem, Ireland

Theme: New models of healthcare

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) represents a major global public health challenge with approximately 1% of the world’s population suffering from this autoimmune musculoskeletal disease. The disease itself follows a variable course in which periods of remission followed by disease flares are common. As such, in the absence of a cure, patients require lifelong treatment to control disease flares.

Patrick’s research aims to understand how the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells and tissues in the joint – and importantly how it forms memory of having done so. This immune memory response could explain how arthritis flares are highly likely to reoccur in a previously affected joint.

Understanding and therefore preventing this memory response would open the door to more lifelong curative treatments for RA and other autoimmune diseases. In addition to having a significant benefit to patients, this would also offer significant advantages in our healthcare system in terms of less frequent hospital visits and reduction in waiting times.

Furthermore this would also offer substantial savings in healthcare costs. Specifically, each year the estimated cost of treating an individual RA patient is approx. €19,596 per year, with an overall cost of ~€544 million to the Exchequer for all RA patients.

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