Awards and Prizes Maynooth University Research Achievement Awards
Early Career Researcher of the Year Dr Gerard McCarthy
Dr Gerard McCarthy, Department of Geography and ICARUS Climate Research Centre, and Professor Philip Nolan, President of Maynooth University
Dr Gerard McCarthy, Department of Geography and Icarus Climate Research Centre was the winner of the overall early career award in 2019. Gerard is an oceanographer working in Icarus and lecturer in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. Gerard previously worked at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, where he worked with the RAPID team measuring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. His research interests are in the role of the ocean in climate and how that might change with climate change. Gerard was recently awarded €2 million in funding from the Marine Institute and the European Regional Development Fund for a major project on Atlantic climate change. Guided by the goals of the Government’s national marine strategy ‘Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth’ and the ‘National Marine Research and Innovation Strategy 2017 – 2021’, the international ‘A4 Project’ marks a substantial investment by the Marine Institute in physical oceanography and climate change research in Ireland, and aims to improve the understanding of the links between trends in Atlantic temperatures and climate change. In addition, he also been involved with European Commission funded projects: THOR (FP7, named researcher), NACLIM (FP7, Institute PI), and the ongoing Blue-Action (Horizon 2020, Institute PI and Work package Leader).
20 Maynooth University Research and Innovation Report 2020
Since finishing his PhD in 2011, Gerard has published over 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has an h-index of 18, an i-10 index of 21, and a Research Gate score of 29.85. His work has been cited over 1400 times, with annual citation numbers increasing year-on-year to over 390 citations in 2018 (Google Scholar). He has consistently published in high impact journals, including a lead author publication in Nature (IF=41.6) in 2015. He is a senior author on 4 out of his 5 most highly cited papers (3 lead author, 1 second author), all of which are ranked in the top 1% most highly cited in the field of Geosciences based on age (Web of Science). Since joining Maynooth University in late 2017, he had had 9 peer-reviewed publications in 2018, including a lead author publication in Geophysical Research Letters (IF=4.3) and second author publication in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society (IF=7.9). He was also invited to contribute a News and Views article to Nature, published in summer 2018.
