`Reach for the sky," is John Hegarty's motto. It's one, he says, which should be adopted by every researcher in the State. It's advice worth taking: Hegarty has spent much of his working life involved in leading edge research. For him, going for broke has paid dividends. Back in 1989, at a time when drumming up cash for research was well-nigh impossible, Hegarty, TCD's professor of laser physics, teamed up with Prof Liam Kelly of UCC. They developed an ambitious laser technology research plan, involving a number of Irish universities. Talking hard, they put their case to civil servants and politicians, persuaded them their work would result in extra jobs, and came away with funding to the tune of £1 million per annum. To date, Hegarty has graduated more than 30 PhD students in a technology - fibre optics - which is one of the hottest communication technologies around. "Demand for people trained in the field now outstrips supply," he says. "We are now in position to reap the harvest. When we started 10 years ago, it was a risk. If we were starting out now, we'd be too late." John Hegarty, who has recently stepped down as TCD's dean of research, puts his interest in science down to his father, a Mayo farmer, who was born in 1881. Hegarty describes his father's way of life as one that has completely died out in rural Ireland. "The only form of entertainment in the country at that time was visiting the houses of friends," Hegarty, the youngest of five, recalls. "As a child, I used to go with him. There was a great sense of wonderment in the conversations of my father and his friends - about life after death, eternity, the universe. They mused about all sorts of things - and science is like that. It's about looking beyond the immediate and finding out how things work and why."

Hegarty was 12 when his father died, leaving his mother to run the farm with the parttime help of her youngest child. By the time he left school, Hegarty had decided he wanted to go to Maynooth to study for the priesthood. "I was young and idealistic. Being a priest and dedicating your life to the service of others was the highest thing you could do in life." Wanting to become a priest wasn't unusual in those days, he adds. Most of the kids he grew up with had thought about becoming priests or nuns at some point. There are similarities between religion and science, he argues. "They provide different answers to the same questions." Hegarty's Maynooth experience offered both freedom and restrictions. While the study of science and philosophy was liberating, other aspects of seminary life were suffocating. By year four, he had lost his faith. "I began to question the whole thing - not just why I was doing it, but the whole fundamental basis of structured religion. I decided to leave and made up my mind that I would never again work under such structures."

He did, however, remain on at Maynooth, to do a HDip as a lay person. He followed this with five years at NUI Galway, moving first into fourthyear physics and then on to do a PhD. In the meantime, he met and married fellow student, Neasa Ni Chinneide. The Galway years were followed by a move to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where Hegarty was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in 1977. The experience was an eye-opener, scientifically and culturally - there were hundreds of foreign graduates from all over the world. "I was in a well-funded group that built a laser and used it to probe how materials worked. The work bore no comparison with anything I had done before." In 1980, with a gloomy economy at home, the Hegartys made the decision to remain in the US. He got a research job with the prestigious Bell Laboratories, a branch of AT&T in New Jersey, where he was surrounded by eminent researchers, including a number of Nobel prizewinners. The fibre optics research project on which Hegarty worked at that time was later highlighted by Time magazine as one of the key developments of the Information Age.

By 1984, the Hegartys had bought a house, had a child and were experiencing the delights of New York City. They had little thought of returning home until TCD professor Dennis Weir turned up on their doorstep and suggested Hegarty apply for the college's chair of laser physics. "I said `no' because I was working in an incredibly exciting environment. But it set us thinking. We were both Irish and thought about Ireland a lot. We'd met many immigrants who regretted they'd never returned to give Ireland a try. Did we want to be among them?" When he thought about it, Hegarty says he realised that although he enjoyed his work, there was something missing. He'd little contact with the world outside and no opportunity to pass on his knowledge. "Teaching and research go hand in hand," he says. "It's all about discovery, new knowledge and passing it on." When Weir returned a year later to ask the same question, Hegarty didn't hesitate. "I decided it was worth a shot." Most people, though, thought he was crazy. "It was 1984 - the height of the depression in Ireland. People were leaving the country in droves. I was one of the very few coming back. I found the teaching fantastic, but a major question remained - how was I going to continue my research? There was very little money available. Research wasn't high on the country's agenda. For the first time in my life I had to go out and hunt for funding." Hegarty was appointed dean of research in 1996 and set about reviewing the college's research policy. The job became more onerous when the HEA introduced its Programme for Research in ThirdLevel Institutions (PRTLI). "It involved a whole new process - laying out a strategy and identifying priorities. The universities weren't prepared for it. It changed the whole culture of the Irish universities and brought research centre-stage. As dean of research I have witnessed the biggest change in the history of the State in terms of its approach to research.

"It's a fascinating time. In the past, there was an attitude that Ireland was too small a country to be targeting the cutting edge of research, which always annoyed me. That attitude has changed and there's much more a feeling of we can do it, especially among students. There's a culture of going for broke emerging and that's healthy."