Policy & Outreach
The SpillaneLab has interests in science policy and communication, with a focus on output-focused research for meeting needs in low- and middle-income countries. Our research group employs research and innovation approaches across multiple disciplines to generate outcomes and impacts, particularly on food security, livelihoods and sustainability (including climate smart agriculture and food systems).
The SpillaneLab is committed to enabling public interaction with science and communicates on our research in a variety of formats including blogs, articles, websites, videos and social media content, among others.
Outreach
Policy
Here is a blurb.
We can note workshops we facilitate, webinars we hold, media we engage with and volunteering our staff are involved in (this might also encourage them to do something outside of the lab).
Then we can add a link to relevant external content
October 2023 – MSc CAFFS student host COP28 online briefing.
Watch the free webinar hosted by the 2024 cohort of MSc CCAFS students on the Ryan Institute YouTube page.
September – Bi-Annual LEG4DEV Research Progress Consortium
Spillane Lab research project host the inaugural LEG4DEV research progress webinar.
Read more from LEG4DEV
November – Galway Science and Technology Festival
Spillane lab members Anish Kumar and Antoine Fort from the Plant & AgriBiosciences Research Centre (PABC) volunteered at the 2012 Galway Science and Technology Festival. Over 300 children enthusiastically interacted with the displays at the PABC stand throughout the day which communicated the importance of plant and agribiosciences research to sustainable development in Ireland and internationally.
National Innovation Taskforce: Policy submission of Prof Charles Spillane to the Irish Government’s Innovation Taskforce 2009.
Curator of Science Gallery HUMAN+ Exhibition
As a member of the Science Gallery’s Leonardo Group, Prof. Charles Spillane was a co-Curator of the award-winning science-art Exhibition HUMAN+ The Future of our Species which explored a future of augmented abilities, authored evolution, new strategies for survival and non-human encounters through a range of installations and laboratories exploring the future of our species. The exhibition opened at Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, on April 15th and ran until June 2011. The HUMAN+ exhibition has since toured globally (e.g. Barcelona 2016; Singapore 2017).
Press Releases – will we move to news? Do we want a section for ‘in the media’ and then a section for lab news? Let’s discuss.
25 April 2014: NUI Galway and Canadian Research Teams Collaborate to Decipher the Genome of Emerging Renewable Oil Crop
20 January 2014: NUI Galway-IITA-Irish Aid research collaboration helps develop vitamin-A rich maize to combat micronutrient malnutrition
17 May 2013: Irish Plant Scientists Conference Hosted by NUI Galway.
13 May 2013: New non-GM technology platform for genetic improvement of sunflower oilseed crop.
14 August 2012: Spillane Lab researchers identify role for non-coding mir-9 in breast cancer and publish findings in Journal of Biological Chemistry.
7 November 2011: Spillane lab researchers contribute to global effort to sequence genome of pigeonpea; study is published in Nature Biotechnology.