Dr Lynette Keeney

Dr. Lynette Keeney is a Senior Researcher and Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellow in Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, focusing on the synthesis and understandings of room temperature multiferroic thin films. She is an inorganic chemistry graduate from National University of Ireland, Galway (PhD 2005), where she won five University awards. Before joining Tyndall in 2008, she worked as a Chemist in industry (Charles River Laboratories, Pre-clinical Services, Montreal Inc.). She continues to engage with industry on projects involving multiferroic materials development for data storage applications e.g. via a Science Foundation Ireland technology innovation award (2014) and through direct funding from Intel Corp. (2016). Dr. Keeney is a member of the International Advisory Board of ECAPD (European Conference on Applications of Polar Dielectrics), is Tyndall-UCC representative on the Microscopy Society of Ireland Council and is a panel reviewer for Royal Society proposal applications. She was an Irish representative for the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action MP0904 (Single and multiphase ferroics and multiferroics with restricted geometries (SIMUFER)). Dr. Keeney is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) and is member of the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society. She was a session organiser and committee member for the IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology (Cork, 2018, approx. 400 delegates) and was local organising committee member for the International Symposium on Integrated Functionalities (Dublin, 2019). Dr. Keeney actively engages in public outreach activities e.g. school visits, work experience programmes, public events and has been invited to receptions (2016 and 2019) hosted by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins and Mrs. Sabina Higgins, to mark International Women’s Day. In 2015 Dr. Keeney was awarded a prestigious Royal Society/Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship for her research project: 'Memories are made of this: Multiferroics Research for Future Generation Memories' and she received the UCC Early Stage Researcher of the Year Award for 2015. Via her Royal Society Award and her recently awarded SFI Frontiers for the Future Project (2020), Dr. Keeney is expanding her research team to explore how sub-unit cell characteristics influence multiferroic behaviour and if these fascinating multiferroic properties can persist close to unit-cell thicknesses.