2024 Radiography conferral and award celebrations

Congratulations to all of our wonderful students who graduated from Radiography on Tuesday 25 June at UCD O’Reilly Hall. 

With 90+ Undergraduate Entry Radiography, 17 Graduate Entry Radiography and 55 MSc students graduating, it was a terrific celebration with close family and friends attending to celebrate this pivotal milestone in our students’ lives.

The following medals were presented at the conferring ceremony:
Deirdre Conroy Medal - Orlaith McAndrew
O'Farrell Medal - Sinead Sexton
Philips Medal - Joint winners Clara Hanrahan and Dawid Zukrowski
Congratulations to all!

We wish our graduates all the very best in their future endeavours – stay in touch!
More photos of the special day are available on our Flickr account.

After the conferrals, a special awards ceremony was held in the Kevin Barry Gallery at the UCD Charles Institute. Several awards were presented, including the inaugural Dr John Stowe Awards (CT) (MRI), presented to Avril Lysaght (CT) and Matthew Oliver (MRI). Members of Dr Stowe’s family were able to attend the presentation including Jean (John's wife), Briann (John's mother), Luke and Rachel (John's children), Caomihe (Luke's fiancée) and Peter (John's father-in-law). Head of Radiography & Diagnostic Imaging, Prof Louise Rainford said, "John was an inspirational teacher with a passion for Radiography. His interest in technology was immense particularly in the areas of CT and MRI, therefore The Dr John Stowe Award (CT) (MRI) is most appropriate and we are delighted to be able to remember our much loved colleague in this way".

As an additional tribute to Dr Stowe, a commemorative plaque has been placed on a bench at the small pond next to the Woodview House at UCD Belfield campus. The plaque reads: "Live the beautiful life that's in you" by Oscar Wilde. 

For further information regarding Dr John Stowe, please see the section below.

 

As Professor Rainford was unable to attend the event, Associate Professor Shane Foley stepped in to present the awards. Congratulations to all the deserving award recipients:

Student of the Year Award - Gabriel Tan and Marie O'Neill
Olive Fleming Award 2024 (GER) - Ma Yat Kwan
Olive Fleming Award 2024 (UER) - Veronika Christie
John Stowe Award MRI - Matthew Oliver
John Stowe Award CT - Avril Lysaght
MDI Ultrasound Award - Louise Fitzgerald
Olive Fleming Award and Medal 2023 (GER) - Atila Abono
HH Stewart Award - Clara Hanrahan

Dr John Stowe
Dr John Stowe was an assistant professor in the Radiography & Diagnostic Imaging Section of the School of Medicine from 2007-2021. Prior to that he was an occasional lecturer since the 1990s. Dr Stowe passed away suddenly aged 56 in July 2021. His areas of expertise were Computed Tomography and Information Technology. He taught on the Radiography Degree programmes and the CT MSc programme as well as the annual CT Academy delivered to staff from clinical centres nationally. 

Dr Stowe was passionate about teaching and a key member of the Radiography team. He was awarded a DELTA teaching award from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in 2019. Dr Stowe worked with colleagues across different units in UCD, particularly with IT related activities, as he developed a number of the technologies we use today for training undergraduate and postgraduate radiographers in specialised areas of imaging; this included developing our virtual reality suites and our image archiving technology. Dr Stowe was actively involved in enhancing the students’ experience and developed several innovative teaching and assessment models, recognised by the National Forum.

Dr Stowe had a unique knowledge of both medical imaging technology and computer science, and he worked for many years in industry as an engineer and medical imaging specialist in CT and with medical imaging informatics systems.  Dr Stowe was recognised as a leading expert in his field by the European Federation of Radiographer Societies – who represent over 100,000 radiographers across Europe. Dr Stowe was a key team member who delivered summer student research offerings as part of OPTIMAX, a consortium of Radiography Centres from several European countries, and he led a summer camp, pre-COVID, where over 30 students visited for 3 weeks of intensive research activity from 8 countries.