Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Applied Physics / PhD in Medical Biosensor / SCUBA Diving Instructor and Examiner / Scout Leader / Education and Public Engagement Manager
Aoibhéann Bird by Adrienne Geoghegan
As a young child Aoibhéann Bird was fascinated with how the world worked, and particularly, the inner workings of her home dishwasher! Growing up with an electronic engineer for a dad, Bird was constantly helping him take things apart only to fix them again. Even though she did no science in primary school (it wasn’t on the curriculum!), her love of the subject was fostered at home through her father and sister, who was also an electronic engineer, and her mother who, as a bookkeeper, instilled in her an appreciation for math and accounting.
When Bird was ten, she joined the Scouts. It had only recently transitioned from the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland to allowing girls in, so she was eager to sign up. She learned how to construct shelters, build fires and cook food, and she went away for outdoor trips with her friends across Ireland and abroad. At the age of 18 she became a Scout leader ‘to give back because someone else had given their time for me.’ She eventually became the Group Leader and to this day she still works with young people aged 15-17 years empowering them to become active citizens, as well as managing the adults and finances of the group.
‘I didn’t really like writing essays, I much more preferred solving puzzles and equations.’
For her leaving cert, Bird took on physics and chemistry as she preferred subjects where she could be hands-on. She was one of just three girls in her year who took on physics, but this didn’t daunt her in the slightest. While she recognises now that that in itself can be a challenge for some people who are choosing their subjects, she knew she loved science and she was going to do it even if she was the only girl in her class.
In 2001, Bird started a degree in Applied Physics in DCU with the plan to become an astrophysicist. She was one of just two women in her course. After achieving some of the top grades in her class in her third year she was able to go to Connecticut, USA for a semester. Here, she discovered that while she still had an incredible interest in space, and would love to be an astronaut, she realised that astrophysics wasn’t exactly what she had thought it would be. She entered fourth year not really knowing what path she wanted to follow but she knew that she ‘still really loved hands-on experiments, space, and light.’ Her final year project in fourth year was to look at tracking the sun to study solar flares.
Following this, Bird applied for the Fás Space Science Challenge which saw 18 Irish students go to Florida to work on a project with the Florida Space Authority and NASA for three months. It was here at the applied physics lab in NASA that Bird was given the advice that in order to follow a path in that area she should do a PhD. When she returned to Ireland, she attended a showcase of PhD topics in DCU and the one that piqued her interest was in the area of biosensors and how one can detect cancer earlier.
Talking about the obstacles she faced throughout her PhD, Bird stated:
I wish I had have stood up for myself a little bit more and realised that I was an expert in that project, but I didn’t feel confident to express that and in hindsight I should have been more vocal and believed in myself.
‘I’ve always been on the water, my mam’s a lifeguard instructor so she taught me how to be a lifeguard at the age of fourteen…’
Diving during her exams in Aug. 2019, Dunmore Cliffs, Valentia, Co. Kerry.
Around the time she started her PhD, Bird joined the Sub-Aqua Club at DCU. Of her initial feeling toward it, she said ‘each week we didn’t know if we’d come back again because it was challenging, but we wanted to get through it and experience the fun of weightlessness, so we kept coming back.’ Bird has been a diver for thirteen years now and just recently (Aug 2019) achieved the highest examiner grade that one can get in Ireland, allowing her to become one of the leading examiners and instructors in the country. Because of this achievement, she can now apply to be part of the technical commission of the Irish Underwater Council. Through this position she hopes to mix her love of physics with her love of diving and ‘bring the education of science into a whole other realm’ through events such as Diving into Space and by revamping the physics lessons to make them more engaging for those learning to dive.
Training students in the DCU Sub-Aqua Club
Bird now works as an Education and Public Engagement Manager at Insight, the SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics. Here, there are a wide array of people with different specialities working on many different projects in many different areas. As Public Engagement Manager, it’s Bird’s job to showcase these projects to the public and demonstrate the cutting-edge research that’s going on in Ireland to the world. She also tries to bring the public into research projects, so, if there is a project based around smart cities, she encourages co-design and talking to people in those cities to ensure the project is addressing the concerns of people living in those areas.
‘Stay curious. Don’t think that you won’t ever be able to merge your passion with the sciences, because you can.’
Receiving her Gold Gaisce Award from President Mary McAleese in 2009.
Bird continues to do a lot of outreach to young people and parents regarding the uptake of science in school. In particular, she is trying to improve the number of girls taking on science subjects. Through being involved in scouting and doing a lot of activities outside of school, the possibility of being the only girl in science class wasn’t a challenge for her, and she recognises that ‘for some people it’s a completely moot point, but for others it is a challenge and that’s the worry that maybe those people won’t choose science because they’ll feel isolated.’ When talking to students she often showcases the research being done by women in the field of science and points out that it is possible, and a good idea, to merge your own personal passions with a career in science, like she has done.
Thank you to Dr Aoibhéann Bird for the photos and for taking the time to meet with us at Herstory and talk to us about her engagement with science. For more information on her go to: https://www.insight-centre.org/users/aoibheann-bird
After interviewing Dr Aoibhéann Bird, I asked her for any suggestions on where people can go to find out more about degrees and careers in STEM and she recommended the following:
· https://www.smartfutures.ie/ - This website ‘is not all the glamour of ‘well every day I go diving with whale sharks’ it shows the real day-to-day stuff, it doesn’t hide the reality of the job. It gives you a good overview of the realistic expectations of what your job could be...’
· http://www.iopireland.org/ - ‘The Institute of Physics run a lot of excellent programmes.’
· http://www.sfi.ie/engagement/science-week/ - Science Week is a fantastic opportunity to meet and talk to people running events, they will happily talk to you about what that career is really like.’
· http://www.engineersireland.ie
· https://festivalofcuriosity.ie/
This herstory by Katelyn Hanna.