Dr. Ciarán Kenny

I undertook a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) course which included ten-week placements at Rawlins Academy, South Wigston High School and Wyggeston & Queen Elizabeth I College.

This gave me the opportunity to both improve on my previous teaching experience in Ireland as well as adapt my skills to the English national curriculum.

Studying under Professor Peter Duffy, I investigated the acceleration of particles in the presence of large-scale compressible turbulence and compared the resulting spectra to the universal suprathermal tails observed experimentally.

During my degree, I took modules across a broad range of topics including astrophysics, computational physics, general relativity, fluid dynamics, computer programming, quantum physics, electromagnetism, particle physics and mathematical modelling.

I was awarded a First Class Honours with a final GPA of 4.12 (highest GPA = 4.2), the highest GPA of UCD science graduates that year.

Honour grades obtained in eight subjects including physics, mathematics, applied mathematics and accountancy, achieving the highest points at my school for that year.

Currently, I am the online educator, website designer, animator and content creator for Exams.ie.

The creation of this website involved a broad understanding of many programming languages, in addition to knowledge of various illustration and animation software.

Prior to this, I also had a similar role in teaching the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) to students in the USA.

During my PhD, I sporadically undertook a lecturing role in various modules across physics.

This involved preparing and giving lectures, correcting homework and class tests and aiding students with any difficulties that they may be having in each respective module.

I undertook teaching roles across all age ranges, primarily teaching the subjects of mathematics and applied mathematics.

This involved preparing and giving classes in addition to writing in-class and final exams.

I served as the primary tutor for various modules throughout my PhD, including modules in astrophysics, thermodynamics, mechanics, computational physics and mathematics. This involved preparing relevant tutorial problems, giving tutorials in a lecture theatre setting, as well as interacting with students by answering any relevant questions that they may have.

I also acted as the primary lab demonstrator in both the third year and fourth year physics undergraduate laboratories. This involved giving classes on programming languages that needed to be used in certain experiments, helping students if they were unable to get their apparatus to work, and generally aiding them with any questions that they may have.

I am proficient in many programming languages, including MATLAB, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, C++, PHP and LaTeX, all of which I have used throughout both my education and career.

I have also completed various MOOCs in my spare time in order to understand the basics of other programming languages, including Julia and Ruby.

During the summers of 2015 and 2016, I was the primary tutor, lab demonstrator and occasional lecturer for the University College Dublin Physics Summer School, a program dedicated to teaching American medical students an introductory physics course over an eight-week period.

During the summer of 2010, I attended the Culham Plasma Physics Summer School in Oxfordshire, UK, where I attended lectures and took part in workshops.

During the summer of 2008, I undertook a 6-week internship at CERN, Switzerland. This involved attending various lectures as well as assisting with the first inaugural tests of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).