New Executive Dean Appointed to the Faculty of Science and Engineering

A new executive dean has been appointed to lead the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Professor Kenneth Stanton, who joins the University of Limerick (UL) from University College Dublin (UCD), has been appointed to the role for a five-year period.

Prior to his appointment, Professor Stanton served as Head of the UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

Professor Stanton said "I am honoured to be able to return to University of Limerick as the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Having been a student, lecturer and Principal Investigator here, I have witnessed first-hand the excellent teaching and research practices that take place within the faculty.

“I am looking forward to working closely with our accomplished faculty members, passionate students, and dedicated staff to foster an environment of creativity, exploration, and knowledge-sharing that will help shape the future of science and engineering education."

Professor Stanton is an alumnus of UL having graduated with a BSc in Materials Science in 1995. Following a Masters in Physics Research at Royal Holloway University of London, he returned to UL to complete his PhD.

During his time at UL Professor Stanton became a member of the Materials and Surface Science Institute (MSSI). In this period, his research was focused on developing and characterising bioceramic-titanium coating methods and on a variety of projects with Aughinish Alumina.

In 2004, Professor Stanton moved to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCD where he held a number of roles. Notably in this period, he became the founder and Programme Director of two Master’s programmes in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). He was appointed as Head of School for the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering in 2018.

Professor Stanton’s research has been highly interdisciplinary covering themes in, among others, biomedical engineering and space engineering. For biomedical engineering, his most recent work has been focused on advanced manufacturing techniques with titanium for orthopaedic implants. He collaborates with a multinational company for this work and is funded through the SFI-AMBER Research Centre. 

For space engineering, he has worked on a variety of projects. However, his notable success in this area was the collaborative development of two coating technologies for the ESA Solar Orbiter mission. These coatings cover around 80% of the exterior surface of this scientific mission to the sun, which cost more than €1.7 billion. This project was undertaken with Irish SME Enbio and won an Engineers Ireland Excellence Award in 2017 and a Knowledge Transfer Ireland Impact Award in 2018.

Professor Stanton is a Fellow of Engineers Ireland (FIEI), a Fellow of the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining (FIMMM) and is a registered Chartered Engineer in Ireland and with the Engineering Council, UK.