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G’Day Mate Cathal O’Connell is proof that a good degree can take you anywhere Having worked now at four different universities, I’m even more appreciative of my undergraduate education at Trinity Growing up I never had big career plans, I just knew I wanted to travel. I imagined that if you were always moving to a new place, nothing would become stale or mundane (and neither would you). In the final year of my Nanoscience degree we had a chance to spend three months abroad for our research project. I chose Australia, and that decision has defined the course of my life so far. Wollongong is a cute seaside town near Sydney, and is characterised by three things: its beaches, its university, and the old steelworks puffing away on the horizon. It took a few weeks to get used to the super casual nature of beachside Australia - with people queueing barefoot in the Post Office and academics ducking out at lunchtime to surf. But soon I fell in love with the place. The next year, after finishing my degree, I wrote to the head of the lab in Wollongong. He told me about a potential PhD project in bionics - a field which uses electrical implants to restore human function. In school I’d dismissed biology as just rote learning, but I’d since become amazed by the intricacy of living systems. Applying nanoscience to something medical sounded fascinating. Plus, I was excited that the Wollongong team was collaborating with the inventor of the cochlear implant (bionic ear). Travelling through South America at this time, I ended up writing my PhD application on a bus in Pero. It was accepted. To save money I flew direct from Argentina to Australia to take it up. I arrived in Australia intending to get my PhD and keep travelling - but one thing led to another, and I’ve lived here 12 years now. I get back to Ireland every year or two and the experience is always surreal – like visiting an alternate universe. This feeling intensifies with time, since every year I return to an Ireland which has drifted even further from the version fixed in my mind, the Ireland I left in my early twenties. Since finishing my PhD I’ve been lucky to have some interesting jobs, including as a writer for popular science magazines. Now I’m a lecturer in engineering at RMIT University and a researcher in biofabrication—the field of ‘building body parts’ by 3D printing living cells. It’s a lot of fun. Still, I’m envious of my wife’s job— she’s a coffee scientist. Having worked now at four different universities, I’m even more appreciative of my undergraduate education at Trinity. Certainly the grounding I received in both physics and chemistry has given me the flexibility to move in and out of different scientific fields. I chose the course because I was interested in the potential of nano-technology to make futuristic materials and devices. Now I do medical research with orthopaedic surgeons. I suppose a good degree can take you anywhere.
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Eric Earle A lasting contribution to education At the 2016 dinner for ‘Scholars of the Decades’ in Trinity’s Dining Hall, the oldest scholar present was Eric Earle, aged 91, scholar in history 1946, and one of Trinity’s most dedicated and active alumni. At his death on 23 December 2021, aged 97, he was the longest-serving member of the Trinity College London Dining Club. His obituary in the Irish Times focussed on his work in the Gold Coast, later Ghana, in the 1950s, and his long association with the country through the NGO, Ghana School Aid, which he co-founded. Born in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, he was brought up in the Strand Road in Sandymount, Dublin. In Trinity, he was among the students who gathered on the roof of the college on VE day, May 1945, to wave Union Jacks in celebration of victory. After graduation, he worked briefly with the Church of England Education Board - improving education access became a lifelong passion. In 1952 he went to the Gold Coast, as it was then, as education officer in the colonial service. He was impressed when Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister and president of the newly independent Ghana, introduced free and compulsory primary education in 1957, and he stayed on in the country a number of years. His wife, Auriol, ran a multi-racial school, and on the couple’s return to the UK with their four children, they helped found Ghana School Aid, a successful NGO which has given grants to over 100 schools in the form of library books, computers, building/construction materials, and water storage tanks, and has fostered connections between British and Ghanaian teachers. Earle served as vice chairman and chairman of the charity and authored Education in Ghana before Independence (Oxford Colonial Records Project, 1983). The family settled in Guildford and Earle joined the administrative staff at the London Polytechnic, before completing his career as secretary of the Institute of Education, a college of London University. He returned to Ireland frequently to visit family and attend events in Trinity and was a particularly active member of the Trinity College London Dining Club, and played a pivotal role in ensuring the success of the motion to admit women as full members. From 1994 to 1997 he served as the Secretary and in this capacity celebrated the 100th anniversary of the club in 1994. His friend Charles Lysaght, writing in the Irish Times, called him ‘a companionable, whimsical, easy-going man, handsome in appearance, loyal to a fault, who attracted a diverse circle of friends’, while Trinity London Dining Club remembers him as ‘a superb diner. It did not matter whom he sat beside, he could be a most convivial talker and listener. A man without ego or airs, he was modest about his achievements, kind and helpful.’
