Eoin Parle - E-Portfolio
Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering
Senior Research Engineer
MET Gateway Research Centre
Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT)
Galway, Ireland
Graphic of case-hardened gear wheel
Graphic from GMIT T&L course
Teaching & Learning
I currently enjoy lecturing in Engineering in GMIT. I lecture first year Engineering students on Engineering in Business. This is a broad course that introduces the many different areas of Engineering including Mechanical, Biomedical, Manufacturing and topics such as design, ethics and quality. The students tend to enjoy the hands-on, lab-based problem solving approaches I use in this course.
On evenings and weekends, I teach several modules in adult education Degree and Diploma programmes including Materials Science and Processes, and Mechanics of Solids. Much of this course is taught online and the students engage well with the digital learning tools used
I am currently undergoing a Certificate in Teaching and Learning degree programme, in GMIT to further develop my teaching methods and to gain a qualification in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. I have found this course to be very informative, enjoyable and inspirational and believe it would greatly benefit anyone who teaches in Higher Education. Click here for more info
Background
Me hard at work as a forensic engineer
I have B.A.I. and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, and have been involved in Materials and Biomedical Engineering Research since 2012. I have examined a wide range of very interesting materials - bone, blood, insect cuticle, sea shells (similar to the nautilus shell in the background image), coral, bamboo, polycrystalline diamond, pycrete, and bioabsorbable stenting materials.
During my PhD I also worked as a forensic engineer examining a wide variety of components and material that had failed, causing injury or harm. These ranged from biomedical materials (hip implants etc.) to everyday objects (ladders, bicycles, pipe fittings etc.). Figuring our why and how these materials had failed using traditional engineering approaches (materials testing, microscopy etc.) was extremely interesting.