Patrick Walsh
Pat has expertise in the areas of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and laboratory automation systems. His primary research interests lie in the application of these to microfluidic technologies and energy systems. These range from experimental investigations aimed at understanding the physics of multi-phase Taylor flows in microfluidic systems for biotech and energy applications, to the analysis and prediction of energy flows in large scale projects such as buildings energy and renewable energy systems. The outputs from his research have been published in over 30 ISI cited journal articles, a chapter in ‘Microfluidics and Nanofluidics Handbook’, an additional 30 peer-reviewed international conference articles, as well as 2 patents on Novel low-profile electronics cooling technologies. He is a lecturer at UL and offers courses in the areas of fluid mechanics, energy in buildings, and the design of renewable energy systems for Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Energy students. He also has a keen interest towards enhancing student learning experiences and actively implements project based learning within his courses.
Research Projects
Design and analysis of novel microfluidic manipulation techniques to enable enhanced analysis of biological samples, E.g. single cell analysis.
Examining fundamentals fluid flow phenomena in multi-phase microfluidics
Improving building energy modelling methods using compact modelling and artificial intelligence modelling techniques.