Dr Ciara Walsh
Senior Engagement Manager: Pharma, Medtech and Food Sectors
Email: Ciara.Walsh@TUDublin.ie
Tel: +35312205675
Ciara is a strong believer in life-long learning, and the evolution, innovation, and transformation of educational models to meet enterprise needs. She advocates for agile and stackable learning, which is accessible to employees for the purposes of upskilling/reskilling in a busy modern world.
Ciara works closely with enterprise partners to build skills solutions, which are relevant and responsive to organisational needs, and current/emerging sector challenges. This includes the identification of knowledge gaps and skills deficiencies, and the co-creation of targeted programmes to meet this specific demand. In addition, Ciara has a strong interest in recognising prior learning (years worked, previous qualifications etc.) within enterprise, collaborating with companies to accredit their own in-house training, and consideration to new (non-traditional) methods of teaching such as ‘mixed media’ (Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence).
Ciara has worked with Enterprise for many years as a work placement co-ordinator, as a lecturer, and as a researcher in TU Dublin and in UCD (Newman Scholar). She also has previous experience in a regulatory capacity working with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, and in the European Commission and the OECD. Ciara has a BSc (hons) in Food Sc. (UCC), a PhD in Microbiology (UU), and a PgDip in Education (Technological University Dublin). She recently led a team in the examination of the socio-economic cost of food hypersensitivity in Ireland and Northern Ireland, which culminated in a very well publicised report with Safefood in June 2022; which featured in Dáil discussion twice in the proceeding weeks of its launch. Her most recent educational endeavour has been the development of Postgraduate programmes (Level 9) in Brewing and Distilling in TU Dublin, to meet a drinks sector demand for more formal learning in this area.
Ciara recently published the case study An Industry-Academic Engagement Study of the Brewing and Distilling Sector in Ireland
Ciara enjoys working in the interface between academia and enterprise to provide skills solutions for industry partners; to help companies to be more resilient and competitive in a demanding market place. If you are interested in talent development please contact Ciara to chat.