'Visionary' science challenge praised for helping graduates fulfil potential

NASA PROGRAMME:AN IRISH graduate who availed of the Fás Science Challenge to spend time at Nasa has said it would be a "disgrace" if the programme was scrapped because of the furore over expenses for senior Fás executives.

Luke Smaul, who has a degree in manufacturing engineering from DIT, was one of 13 Irish graduates who spent time at Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in 2004.

The six-week course, he said, was a highlight of his career and "an absolutely positive experience", and that the programme itself should not be a victim of the pressure put on Fás because of profligate spending in the past.

"It got me exposed to technology I never would have got in Ireland. To be there for six weeks, just to be living amongst those people and, day to day, working with the top researchers and scientists in their field, was absolutely fantastic, inspiring stuff. They require the absolute cream of the crop."

At the time Nasa was preoccupied with getting the space shuttle programme back in service after the Columbia disaster of the previous year. The graduates were exposed to Nasa's latest developments in cryogenics (the use of rocket fuels at supercooled temperatures), telemetry (communication technology), biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Mr Smaul, who now works as an engineer with a multinational based in Ireland, said spending time at Nasa is an advantage on a CV and a good talking point.

"I learned confidence and I was inspired to come home and just fulfil my potential as an engineer, so in the future I could be working on such exciting research. The only way we are going to survive as an economy is to expose ourselves as a knowledge-based economy, and in order to do that we need to expose our top students to that kind of science and engineering."

At the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday, Christy Cooney, the assistant director general of Fás, said the programme was under review, though he admitted it did good work.

Dr Denis Headon, the founder of Biolink USA-Ireland - which seeks to foster links between scientific institutions in the US and Ireland - said there were about 45 graduates currently at US institutions through the programme.

Fifteen of them work in Houston. Six graduates are working in nanotechnology at Rice University, where Dr Headon lectures.

Dr Headon said the former director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, who resigned this week over the expenses scandal, deserves "great credit" for promoting the programme which is now coveted by other countries.

"The Chinese and the Indians have come to Rice University to try and establish links and one of the mentors at the university has told them what they should be doing is what Fás has been doing. It is a very visionary programme. Roddy put a lot of effort into it from the beginning."