EPI∙STEM PODCAST EPISODE 34

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Professor JJ Leahy as their special guest. Professor JJ Leahy is Head of the Department of Chemical Sciences in the University of Limerick, a world-renowned expert on environmental chemistry who is working on large scale research projects and in an advisory role in relation to European directives.In the EPI·STEM podcast today, Professor JJ Leahy shares the changing face of the scientific research and higher education taking place in the Department of Chemical Sciences today, especially with the new emphasis on finding innovative and sustainable solutions to issues of waste management, climate change, biomedical issues and renewable energies. This has resulted in former disciplinary teams in higher education nowadays working more across multiple disciplines, in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary spaces sharing these ethical and epistemic puzzles, including chemical engineering, industrial biochemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry and environmental sciences.Professor JJ Leahy shares his passion for scientific research and innovation and what it can do when coupled with the foundational and ethical principles of education and good governance to inspire mindset change and lifelong learning among a scientifically informed general population, with an increasing critical awareness of the necessity for a care-based, sustainable and cooperative future.The music selection today is performed by Caoimhe Doherty, a third-year student in the BA in World Music in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Here Caoimhe plays a jig written by Junior Crehan called Misty Covered Mountain.