Biography:
Áine Ní Fhuaráin is a third-year PhD student with DPTC. She is based in UCD and is supervised by Professor Aoife Gowen. Áine’s work focuses on predicting the functional properties of milk using spectroscopy and chemometrics. She completed a BSc and an MSc in Chemistry at the University of Galway. Following this, she spent two years working as a Quality Control Lab Technician in the Chemistry Lab at Tirlán in Kilkenny. During the PhD Áine has acquired and analysed data, worked in collaboration with specific industry partners, attended and presented at national and international conferences and workshops, and participated in teaching with modules at UCD. Recently, she won the Irish IDF student prize funding competition to attend the IDF World Dairy Summit 2023 conference in Chicago. While there, she won first place in the Safety and Quality Chemistry and Composition Research category poster prize and was able to present the poster at the award ceremony for this prize at the conference. Áine hopes to attend the conference again in the future and would like to continue to learn from and contribute to the global dairy community.