The Nanovic Sustainability Research Fellowship is a funded initiative which allows undergraduate students to independently research environmental and sustainable endeavours during their semester studying abroad.

Fellows will dive deep into the unique sustainability approaches taken in their host countries, comparing and contrasting to their experiences at Notre Dame and in the United States more broadly.

Students receive mentorship from the Nanovic Institute as well as Notre Dame Dublin, who connect the fellows with local faculty at Trinity College Dublin, Univeristy College Dublin, or Dublin City University as well as local community organizations and government representatives in their areas of interest. Fellows will present their research findings wehn they return to campus in the fall semester.

The Nanovic Sustainability Research Fellowship is funded by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies with support from the Notre Dame Office of Sustainability and Notre Dame Global.

Nanovic Sustainability Research Fellows

Dublin Spring 2025

Rika Felten

My name is Rika Felten, and I am originally from Millersville, Maryland. I lived in Cavanaugh Hall on campus and am studying Chemical Engineering with a minor in Engineering Corporate Practice. For my sustainability research project, I am evaluating the feasibility and impact of offshore wind energy projects on Dublin’s power generation and overall energy infrastructure. This includes analyzing the economic and environmental viability of proposed offshore wind farms, assessing their potential contribution to Ireland’s renewable energy goals, and understanding public and expert perspectives on their development. I have found so far that while offshore wind energy has significant potential to support Dublin’s growing energy needs, the major hindrances to large scale implementation are infrastructural and regulatory challenges.

I applied for this research opportunity because with climate change being such a pressing issue, I know that to combat it a variety of solutions are needed through interdisciplinary cooperation. This research will allow me to contribute to a critical area of sustainability while engaging with Irish scholars, organizations, and policymakers to identify realistic solutions for integrating offshore wind energy into Dublin’s energy grid. In both the US and Ireland, large-scale renewable energy projects are essential to reducing carbon emissions and ensuring a cleaner, more sustainable future. Through this fellowship, I hope to contribute to innovative solutions that balance environmental responsibility with economic growth and societal needs.

Christine Hruby

My name is Christine Hruby, and I am a Junior from New Jersey. I am studying ACMS and also taking Life Science courses to complement my major. On campus I live in Welsh Family Hall and enjoy playing tennis for fun. This semester I will be looking into water quality, including biodiversity and nutrient levels, at Castle Lake, County Cavan. I will also be interacting with the local community through events and field trips. I plan to compare my results with those that I found last summer, with the Irish Internship Programme and DCU’s Urban Citizen’s Project, when looking at water quality in four river catchments in Dublin.

I applied for the research proposal so that I could build upon my past research that I conducted in Ireland. I also really enjoyed working under Professor Susan Hegarty and so wanted to learn more about Dublin outside of the classroom. I am interested in sustainability since it is extremely interdisciplinary, and so I desire to bring sustainable practices with me in my future projects and career.

Jack MapelLentz

I’m originally from Afton, Minnesota, right on the edge of the Twin Cities, but on campus my home is Keough Hall. I’m majoring in chemical engineering, and in my free time I love playing music (acoustic guitar, and attempting to sing alongside it), reading, running, cross-country skiing, hiking, and biking.

I’m working alongside Christine with Dr. Susan Hegarty on a citizen science water quality monitoring program in western Co. Cavan, where two communities are concerned about their watersheds’ continued health. We made the trip out to Castle Lake a couple weeks ago and saw how beautiful the region is — and how closely nature and industrial facilities neighbor one another. Christine and I will be helping run the administrative end of the program, and residents of the community will sample the water quality and submit their results online; the hope is that this strategy will encourage long-term involvement and encourage enthusiasm about the vitality of their watersheds.

When I first received Dr. Munsen’s email about the program, I thought it sounded like an awesome opportunity to learn more about the place I’d soon call home for the season. Christine mentioned that Dr. Hegarty might be looking for some additional help with her research, and as luck would have it, she was about to kick off a new project — what we’re working on now. I’m so grateful for the program making it possible for me to get to know a sliver of Ireland which I never would have seen otherwise — not only the land, but the complex environmental-economic issues it faces, and the wonderful people who live there.

I’ve always been deeply invested in the well-being of our environment — who wouldn’t be? While it may be hard to say whether any one bout of unseasonable weather is because of climate change, I feel as though even across my short life, it snows less and less each winter, and it’s longer and longer every year before winter really starts. The water we drink is always under threat, whether from overextraction of aquifers or the leaching of pollution from dumping grounds and manufacturing plants. Our air quality spikes into the severely unhealthy purple zone a bit more every summer, as wildfires from the drought-ridden forests of Canada bellow smoke unabated. Meanwhile, the tar sands of Alberta are churned up, and their oil sent through pipelines across the forests that remain. Everyone should be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. And I don’t want to lose the snow. That’s why I’m interested in sustainability.

Sara Wheeler

My name is Sara Wheeler. I am originally from Needham, Massachusetts. On campus, I reside in Welsh Family Hall. I study economics with minors in theology and constitutional studies.

As a Nanovic Sustainability Research Fellow in Dublin, my research focuses on the ongoing affordable housing crisis in Ireland, and specifically, the issue of vacant and derelict properties. With this research, I hope to gain insight into the current state of vacancy and dereliction as it stands, evaluate how effective government policy has been toward addressing it, and offer my own data-backed proposal for what the best approach is to fix vacancy and dereliction in a sustainable manner moving forward.

I became interested in housing after taking an economics class at Notre Dame on mortgage markets. I gained hands-on experience in this field through internships: last summer, I interned with the US Department of Agriculture Rural Agency’s Single Family Guaranteed Loan Program, which provides affordable housing to low to moderate income families living in rural America, and this summer, I will work for Freddie Mac in their multifamily business sector. I see the Nanovic Sustainability Research Fellow program as an excellent way to further apply my interest in housing using a data-focused research approach that, importantly, emphasizes solutions that are sustainable and forward-looking. The knowledge I gain about the housing system in Ireland will undoubtedly transfer over to my work related to housing in the US.

Originally published by Maggie Arriola at dublin.nd.edu on March 06, 2025.