Realised Vision

In 1999, to mark the end of the millennium, the Engineers Ireland West Region committee developed the Realised Vision website featuring noteworthy engineering projects in the West region or projects of national and international significance that were led by engineers from the West region.

The information contained on the Realised Vision website was moved to the Engineers Ireland website in 2024. Click the link below to read about the several engineering projects, infrastructure development and personalities which were deemed important to the West region by the Engineers Ireland West Region committee as we welcomed the third millennium.

Constructed wetlands of Ireland and the birth of the online database

Constructed wetlands are human-made wastewater treatment systems which are gaining in popularity due to their acceptance as being economical, green, and efficient and which require relatively little maintenance and monitoring compared with the more conventional alternative. They have several advantages in comparison with the latter. Requiring lower operation and maintenance costs They are a sustainable, green system requiring lower operation and maintenance costs. In addition, the ...

From engineering to the end line, it's all in a week's work for Mayo's Tom Parsons

From a young age, Tom Parsons had an interest in all things STEM: whether it was science, technology, engineering or maths. “I studied engineering at Sligo IT [BSc in civil engineering] and, when I graduated from there in 2010, I went on to DIT to do a master's degree [in Energy Management (MSc)]," he says. "I was always interested in construction, construction management and engineering. Any part-time job I had as a kid was in construction." Following graduation in 2012, Parsons had to ...

The complexity of engineering for life in space

NUI Galway PHD student Ilaria Cinelli explains the unique challenges of engineering solutions for space missions. Cinelli was selected as commander of Crew 172 in 2016 and Crew 185 in 2017 of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) and also won the Emerging Space Leader Scholarship by MDRS. During a four-week mission in Utah she collected data-based research on the crew’s behavioural patterns throughout the mission and tested emerging technology. During the mission there were numerous ...

ENERGISE project in top gear as it hooks into 1,000 best practice energy models across Europe

The ENERGISE project, funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme for three years (2016-2019) and led by Dr Frances Fahy from National University of Ireland, Galway, is a pan-European initiative that aims to reduce energy usage in households and communities across Europe and contribute to European policy-making on energy. ENERGISE develops, tests and assesses options for a bottom-up transformation of energy use in households and communities across Europe. It stands for the European Network ...

Mechanobiology and the future of medical-device design

During the design and validation phase, medical devices undergo rigorous and extensive testing to establish both the biocompatibility and mechanical stability of the device before obtaining regulatory approval and being implanted into patients as treatments for disease and injury. However, the human body is highly adaptive and cells and tissues can change their composition, structure and function in response to biophysical stimuli – in particular, those imposed by these medical devices ...

CÚRAM engineers nanomechanical stem-cell technologies to benefit orthopaedics

Dr Manus Biggs, lecturer within the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Investigator at CÚRAM, the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research in Medical Devices at NUI Galway, has just published two separate research papers on the role of nanomechanical cues in cell biology in top-tier international journals, one in the Nature journal Nature Biomedical Engineering and another in the ...

Your Committee contacts

Our committees arrange and host technical presentations, discussions, debate and social events in our regions and represent the group at liaison committee. If you are interested in being a part of this committee, please contact our Sector Support team at sectorsupport@engineersireland.ie. You must be logged into the website to display the current committee members below.