Lecturer: PI on Sell STEM project and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action ITN

Email: gavin.duffy@tudublin.ie

Tel: +353 1 2205934

Gavin is a lecturer in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at TU Dublin and is also coordinator of SellSTEM (Spatially Enhanced Learning Linked to STEM), a Doctoral Training Network funded under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (sellstem.eu).

Gavin is actively engaged in research on spatial cognition in STEM learning and is involved in several projects in this area through collaborating with researchers at other universities and supervising PhD students.  Projects include investigating the role of spatial ability in problem-solving and conceptual understanding in STEM, teacher professional development to support greater attention to spatial ability development, harnessing maker education, design-based learning and STEM outreach to enhance spatial ability development and investigating the relationship between spatial ability and motivation to pursue STEM education and careers.

SellSTEM consists of 15 PhD students spread across 10 universities in Europe whose projects aim to raise spatial ability levels of children in Europe, especially girls, so they are better prepared for the cognitive demands of STEM learning.  The project is inter-sectoral with several non-academic partners involved in research, training and hosting PhD secondments.  Research is conducted in primary and secondary schools with children and teachers and in higher education settings.  Through these projects, Gavin collaborates with cognitive and educational psychologists, linguists, designers, teacher educators, mathematicians, engineers and others.

Gavin Duffy graduated with a Masters in Chemical Engineering from University College Dublin in 1995 and PhD in Spatial Cognition from TU Dublin in 2018.  He spent a year as visiting scholar at Ohio State University in 2016/17 and collaborates with researchers in Europe, USA and Australia.  He teaches modules in Instrumentation, Automation, Control Engineering and Chemical Process Technology on the Grangegorman campus.