‘One of the best things about University of Limerick is the collaboration’
SFI award-winning researcher Dr Sarah Guerin tells Becca Laffan that ‘people working together’ can make meaningful change for the future
Dr Sarah Guerin, of UL's Department of Physics, is an SFI award-winning researcher Pictures: Alan Place
‘One of the best things about University of Limerick is the collaboration’
SFI award-winning researcher Dr Sarah Guerin tells Becca Laffan that ‘people working together’ can make meaningful change for the future
Dr Sarah Guerin, of UL's Department of Physics, is an SFI award-winning researcher Pictures: Alan Place
On the wall of Dr Sarah Guerin's office in the Bernal Institute is a large poster detailing the very beginnings of her research with crystals.
“I keep this as a reminder of where I started,” Dr Guerin explains with a laugh. “Back when I was literally Googling ‘how to grow crystals’ and ‘what is an amino acid’ after coming out of an Applied Physics degree.”
Several years later, Dr Guerin is now the principal investigator (PI) of the Actuate Lab in UL’s Department of Physics, where biomolecular crystals are being developed and tested for use in real-world applications as portable power supplies.
“It is just the coolest and most surreal thing I have ever done,” she says while talking about the multidisciplinary research group which was developed in 2022.
“It is hard when you move up to the PI level because you are doing so much less science between purchases and admin
“But then I walk past the lab and see the team in there, and what we're doing is working. It was scary and high-risk, but it is working.”
Dr Guerin, who is also a member of SSPC, the SFI Research Centre based at UL, has secured €2m of funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the European Research Council (ERC) for the development of the organic piezoelectric device components.
Currently, these components are often made with environmentally and ethically harmful substances like lead or cadmium.
A ‘disruptive’ team
“We could have just made 100 different types of crystals and published 100 papers on their properties,” she says.
“But we wanted to go beyond that and make something that has real-world impact, which I think is still quite rare in academia to go for.
“We are not afraid to go for big grants and big papers, there's no fear and that's disruptive. You are not doing what will naturally come next, instead, you are asking yourself ‘what is the hard thing to do?’”
Dr Guerin is principal investigator of the Actuate Lab in UL’s Department of Physics
The team’s hope is to soon transfer their research to safe, tangible, real-life devices that can be used in areas like eco-friendly sensing and pharmaceuticals, such as medical implants and drug delivery devices.
“We have these eight people working together in synergy, and the second we break through the technology in a way that it works as a proper device, we can really go into all these diverse applications across a variety of industries.”
A changing landscape
A recent Institute of Physics in Ireland report found that physics-based industries employ 190,000 people in Ireland, with a 45% growth in jobs between 2010 and 2020.
However, it was found that this growing demand is unmet, with links to the lack of uptake in the subject at second and third level.
of funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the European Research Council (ERC) for the development of the organic piezoelectric device components
The Actuate Lab team hope to soon transfer their research to safe, tangible, real-life devices that can be used in areas like eco-friendly sensing and pharmaceuticals, such as medical implants and drug delivery devices
The thing I love most about physics and research is the creativity and the imagination
“If we are losing students, we are losing teachers and we are losing multinational companies in Ireland,” says Dr Guerin.
“The current education system makes people hate science, particularly physics. It would benefit science the most to change how we're examining physics students in secondary schools.
“It is a big issue without an obvious solution. Unfortunately the same students who are intimated by physics are going on to teach science. But UL has a new professional diploma in physics teaching for current Junior Cert science teachers, so we are starting to resolve that issue in-house.”
Creative collaboration
“The thing I love most about physics and research is the creativity and the imagination,” Dr Guerin says.
“Really it is about asking questions, that curiosity. How to solve a problem from a unique angle, in a systematic way with experimental design.”
This problem-solving rarely happens alone, she explains.
“One of the best things about the Bernal, but in UL in general, is the collaboration. You will see all the biggest papers that come out of UL have several authors, because we know how to work together towards these big global challenges.
“How do we actually meaningfully make change for the future? It is people working together.”
Dr Guerin says she feels that oftentimes in academia, there's a tendency to “seek out the superstars”, but UL does things differently.
“UL does a brilliant job of rewarding people who work together,” she says.
“Look at the President’s Research Excellence and Impact Awards, it's not about the best CV, or who has the best papers, or the best h-index. It is about who has the most like tangible thing to actually come out of what they're doing.”
This collaboration extends far beyond the Bernal, she explains, touching on the scale and diversity of the UL alumni community globally.
“There are people I sat beside in my undergrad lectures now doing research all over the world, and I know I can contact them if I need their specific expertise on a topic. It is fantastic to see so many leaders in the field come from UL, even when they haven't stayed on campus.”
How do we actually meaningfully make change for the future? It is people working together
“Coming to the realisation that I had to take a step back for a while was difficult,” she says.
“So to win the award brought with it a moment of ‘everything is fine, everyone sees what you are doing’. It made me relax, I knew we were still on the right track.”
In November 2023, Dr Guerin was awarded Science Foundation Ireland’s Early Career Researcher of the Year. “For them to recognise the importance of what we’re doing before we hit all the stereotypical metrics that normally get you an award, that was the best thing for me in a year where I had to learn to slow down,” she explains.
Dr Guerin experienced the loss of two close family members in 2023, and describes the winning the award as a “humanising moment”.
Going into 2024, she says the experiences of last year have made her “more present”.
“I am worrying less about the next award, the next grant or the next paper. I see my team in the lab, and PhD students making their first big discovery and I appreciate it even more than before,” she says.
“We did a lot of exciting stuff in 2023 in the lab, so 2024 is about showing people what we have done, which I am looking forward to.”
Comfort in failure
“2023 also helped me to not be afraid to fail as a scientist,” Dr Guerin says, adding that importance of failure plays a huge role in her lecturing.
“Something that I am doing more and more every year is giving students the opportunity to fail at science in a safe space.
“I work with my final year project students on current research, things that we haven't done yet that would actually be a patent or a paper if it comes through,” she explains.
“I remind them they're the first person in the world to doing this, and they really love that. But you have to embrace the failure rather than try to avoid it.
“So if a student comes in to my office and says they don’t know anything and that they can’t afford to fail, I show them the poster on the wall from when I felt like I didn’t know anything.”
