Assoc ProfessorJohn O'Sullivan

Dr. O’Sullivan is a Associate Professor in the UCD School of Civil Engineering, a Fellow in the UCD Earth Institute and a member of the UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research. With over 20 years of research experience, Dr. O’Sullivan has developed expertise in the fields of catchment hydrology, river hydraulics and fluvial processes, together with the integration of catchments and river systems into hydrodynamic and water quality models of transitional and coastal waters. Dr. O’Sullivan’s projects have often required extensive field measurements (EPA funded Siltflux project and ERDF funded SmartCoasts project) and he has developed expertise in both instrumentation and the deployment of sensor networks for high resolution data acquisition. The EPA funded Siltflux project (value (€500k) on which Dr. O’Sullivan was a PI, assessed the measurement and modelling of suspended sediment release from catchments of different land cover. The ERDF funded Smart Coasts project (value €4.5m) on which Dr. O’Sullivan was a PI involved the deployment of a sensor network in the River Dargle catchment for the validation of a deterministic bathing water quality model to support compliance with the revised EU Bathing Water Directive. Dr. O’Sullivan’s Ph.D research involved laboratory research at the UK Flood Channel Facility to assess sediment transport and morphological issues in two-stage channel flows. Dr. O’Sullivan has 100+ publications incl. 40 peer-reviewed journal papers and 56 national/ international conference papers. Dr. O’Sullivan has supervised 8 no. Ph.D students and 3 no. Research Masters students to completion and is an Associate Editor of the IWA Journal of Water Supply and is a regular reviewer for numerous Q1 journals. Dr. O’Sullivan’s current research projects include ACCLIMATIZE (providing predictive models of climate change drivers for assessments of coastal bathing and shellfish harvesting waters), SWIM (developing real-time predictive models for bathing water quality), ECOSTRUCTURE (implementing overtopping mitigation measures for coastal defences that are environmentally sustainable), RECONNECT (assessing and modelling the impacts of barrier removal in Irish river systems), and another large-scale EPA funded project assessing the fate and transport of microplastics from agricultural catchments.