2010 press releases
Posted 10 February 2010
Cryptosporidium Research wins Poster Fest at AIT
A postgraduate research project comparing two means of treating cryptosporidium in drinking water has won a poster fest competition at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT).
Jennifer Hayes from Castlerea, Co Roscommon, is currently studying for an MSc in Health Science at the institute. Her research focuses on the combined use of pulsed ultra-violet light and pulsed plasma gas discharge systems. By investigating scale-up factors this will help bring the innovation to the market. Her work builds on previous research conducted at AIT into novel means of destroying the parasite.
According to one of her supervisors, Dr Neil Rowan, “Jennifer’s research will hopefully impact positively on consumer health and wellbeing in Ireland, by safeguarding water supplies using next generation sterilisation technologies. This extends pioneering work undertaken in the institute by Dr Mary Garvey and is enhancing the scale and capacity of this research cluster,” he said.
In 2007, an estimated 2,000 people became ill during the cryptosporidium outbreak in Galway, with more than 240 confirmed medical cases of cryptosporidiosis. A report published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year found, however, that only seven of the 64 supplies identified in 2007 as having no treatment barrier to remove cryptosporidium had installed one since the outbreak of the parasite in Galway.
Ms Hayes graduated with first class honours with a BSc (Hons) in Toxicology in 2008 from AIT. Her current research is supervised by Dr Andy Fogarty and Dr Neil Rowan. She recently represented AIT in a pan-European intensive programme on safe food and wellbeing in Amsterdam, where she finished in top five per cent of class of 40 postgraduate students representative of 14 different academic institutions across EU.
