| Overall Rating | Gold |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 83.66 |
| Liaison | Philippe Lemarchand |
| Submission Date | Dec. 2, 2024 |
Technological University Dublin
AC-6: Sustainability Research
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
10.00 / 10.00 |
6.1 Percentage of academic departments engaged in sustainability research
Number of academic departments engaged in sustainability research:
Annotated list or inventory of the institution’s sustainability research by department:
Description of the process used to identify the institution’s sustainability research:
All research articles affiliated to "Technological University Dublin" OR "TU Dublin" OR "TUDublin" have been retrieved interrogating https://www.scopus.com/. 2,969 documents found since 2018. Results have been exported in a CSV format with all information on "Citation information", "Bibliographic information", "Abstract & Keywords". A unique list of affiliation is extracted - one found 276 affiliations. The title and abstract of each document have then been analysed by our sustainability language model to identify the SDGs and sustainability level associated to each paper. A list (CSV and/or XLSX file) of documents identified by our tool as being Sustainability-Focused and Sustainability-Inclusive is produced. Out of the 2,9696 research papers, 990 are identified as sustainable. The list of affiliation is then filtered to the 26 identifiable academic departments engaged in research. One then found 129 sustainability-focused o -inclusive papers affiliated to the 26 identifiable research departments. This list is consequently a sample of sustainability-focused or -inclusive papers published across the university.
The Reporting Tool will automatically calculate the following two figures:
Points earned for indicator AC 6.1:
6.2 Incentives for sustainability research
Description of the sustainability research incentives for academic staff:
1) Funding and time release/buy-out for staff for sustainability research (or any other topic) is possible upon research proposals being funded. To support / incentivise academic-researchers in submitting research proposals, 2h per week of teaching buy-out is offered to supervisors. This incentive is applicable to all research projects – not only to “Sustainability research”.
2) A Research Hub has been developed with focus on "Sustainability & Health" (Ref1). The research Hub pushes the Sustainability agenda across many sustainability topics such as water, food, energy, policies, and health.
3) TU Dublin Sustainability Strategy promotes sustainable research agendas (Ref2). For example, our Climate Action Roadmaps (Ref3) track carbon emission in scope 1, 2, and 3; then identify a list of actions or which some are associated to research. Sustainability research is further promoted with monetary award provided by the Vice-President for Research and Innovation at the annual TU Dublin R&I Awards to cement the importance of recognising and incentivising excellent researchers for their efforts.
4) TU Dublin developed a living laboratory approach bridging sustainability research and the university operation (Ref4)
5) In some instances, funded research projects create sub-research programmes that are accelerating the participation of staff, researchers and students, and accelerating the sustainability research agenda. For example, funded sustainability research projects (Ref5) include "Towards a Sustainability University Campus" (Ref6), SATLE (Ref7) and N-TUTORR (Ref8). Under these National, international, or industrially funded projects, leaders have recruited researchers focused on sustainability aspects and/or created calls of interests to staff and students to apply for sustainability research projects grants.
URL References:Ref1: https://www.tudublin.ie/research-innovation/research/discover-our-research/research-hubs/sustainability-health/
Ref2: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/vision--progress/sustainability-strategy/
Ref3: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/vision--progress/sustainability-strategy/climate-action-roadmap/
Ref4: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/societal-engagement/living-labs/
Ref5: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/strategic-projects/
Ref6: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/strategic-projects/action-research/towards-a-sustainable-university-campus/
Ref7: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/academic-affairs/digital-education/building-organisational-digital-capability/projects/
Ref8: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/academic-affairs/ntutorr/about/
Does the institution provide incentives for students to conduct sustainability research?:
Description of the sustainability research incentives for students:
1) Top-Down approach: Sustainability projects (Ref1) involve academic partners promoting potential internships on sustainability.
2) Bottom-up approach: On a large number of programmes students must conduct an internship. Students are encouraged to think of a sustainability topic that they could align and research with sustainability office functions. (e.g. A master project consisted in reviewing the range of bins in the university, their sorting capacities, and develop sensors that could measure volume and weight in each bin)
3) Transversal approach: Our living labs (Ref2) create the dynamic connections between operation, academic, researchers, students, and the public.
4) A large range of PhD research topics addressing sustainability are offered by each school
5) PhD Research Grant are provided on some topics addressing sustainability
URL References:
Ref1: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/strategic-projects/
Ref2: https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/societal-engagement/living-labs/
The Reporting Tool will automatically calculate the following figure:
Optional documentation
Additional documentation for this credit:
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.