Professor John Costello,

B.Sc., Ph.D., C.Phys., F.Inst.P, M.Eur.Phys.Soc,

ORCID: 0000-0003-4677-9999

ResearcherID: L-8011-2017

Scopus Author ID: 7201995887

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rQGrsCoAAAAJ&hl=en

 

Note: I retire at the end of 2024 and can no longer recruit and mentor PhD students or postdocs.

 

Co-ordinates

Postal Address:

School of Physical Sciences

Dublin City University,

Glasnevin,

Dublin 9.

Email:       John.Costello@dcu.ie

 

 

Current Position:

Full Professor of Physics School of Physical Sciences, Dublin City University

 

 

DCU Career History:

University Roles

2011 – 2016: Dean of the Faculty of Science and Health

2009 – 2011: (Acting) Associate Dean (Research) – Faculty of Science and Health

2004 – 2009: Head of the School of Physical Sciences

 

Academic Ranks

2025 –         : Emeritus (Full) Professor

2014 – 2024: Full Professor

2005 – 2014: Associate Professor

1990 – 2005: Senior Lecturer

1987 – 1990: Lecturer

1984 – 1987: Assistant Lecturer

 

DCU Awards

President’s Research Award Winner 2017

Richard O’Kennedy Faculty Awards (Overall Winner) 2023

 

 

Education:

1980 – 1986: PhD in Laser Plasma Physics (UCD)

1976 – 1980: BSc in Experimental Physics (UCD)

1966 – 1976: Westland Row Christian Brothers Primary and Secondary School – WR CBS – see the PPU page here

 

 

 

Professional Body Memberships:

Institute of Physics – IOP (Fellow and Chartered Physicist)

European Physical Society – EPS (Member)

 

 

 

National/ International Research Board Memberships

Current Memberships

1. EPSRC Peer Review College

2. Institute of Physics (IOP) Fellowship Panel

3. Editorial Board of the Optics and Lasers section of Applied Sciences (MDPI)

4. Scientific Advisory Council of the Centre for Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences and Technologies (CAMOST), IIT/IISER (Tirupati)

 

 

Former National and International Boards/ Committees

1. Chair Steering Committee, European Fusion Development Association (EFDA) for Ireland

2. Committee Member IOP Atomic and Molecular Interactions Group (AMIG)

3. Committee Member of the Institute of Physics (in Ireland)

4. Honorary Treasurer of the Institute of Physics (in Ireland)

5. Board Member of the European Group for Atomic Spectroscopy

6. Member International Advisory Board, Highly Charged Ions Conference Series

7. Member International Advisory Board, University of  Manchester Photon Science Institute

8. Committee Member of ANREST

9. Editorial Board of the Journal of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (JAMOP) – Hindawi Publishing Corporation

10. External Examiner (All Physics Programmes) University College Cork (UCC)

11. Editorial Board of the Journal of Modern Optics (JMO) – Taylor & Francis

12. Member and Vice-Chair of the European XFEL SQS Proposal Review Panel 

13. Founder and International Advisory Board member of the I-SWAMP (Intense-field Short Wavelength Atomic and Molecular Processes) workshop series

 

 

 

DCU Board/Committee Memberships:

Current

1. School of Physical Sciences Teaching Committee

2. DCU Research Infrastructure Executive Committee

 

Former

1. Academic Council

2. Faculty Executive Group (Chair)

3. Faculty Management Board (Chair)

4. Faculty Research Committee (Chair)

5. Faculty Teaching Committee

6. Faculty Health and Safety Committee

7. Faculty Chair Committee (Chair)

8. DCU Full Economic Costing Steering Group

9. DCU Senior Management Group

10. DCU Executive

11. DCU GAA and Athletics Academies

12. DCU Academic Promotions Committee

13. DCU Women in Leadership Steering Group

14. DCU Research Advisory Panel

15. DCU Graduate Studies Board

16. DCU University Research Committee

17. Office of the VP Research - Sustainability Working Group

18. Search Committee for President DCU 2010 - 2020

19. DCU Foresight Panel

20. DCU Mentorship Working Group

21. DCU Teaching Quality Evaluation and Enhancement (TQEE) WG

22. DCU India Working Group

23. DCU Research Infrastructure Advisory Committee (Chair)

 

 

 

RECENT NEWS ITEMS

08-11-2024 New paper from collaborator Mary Pryce and her group including joint PhD student Ross McGarry in the journal Biomacromolecules that can be downloaded here.

 

01-11-2024 Governing Authority has awarded me the title of Professor (Emeritus) to coincide with my retirement from DCU after 40 years of service in academic and executive roles.

 

06-06-2024 Seamus Cummins has won the Grant Thornton High Achieving Merit Award at the 2024 Student Entrepreneur Awards held in UCC for his plan on wind turbine inspection using AI driven machine vision imaging – ‘Aero Beam’.

 

 

19-04-2024 Manuscript on EUV driven NL processes in Ne with PhD student Stephen Durkan accepted by Journal of Physics B for a special edition on NL processes in XFEL fields edited by:

Martin Beye, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Germany

Majed Chergui, LACUS – EPFL, Switzerland

Claudio Masciovecchio, FERMI - Elettra, Italy

Cristian Svetina, Fundacion IMDEA nanociencia, Spain

 

 

06-03-2024 Stephen Durkan has a piece on the RTE Brainstorm website on Moore’s Law and EUV lithography, associated with our SFI funded project with INTEL collaboration. You can read it here.

 

 

12-01-2024 Lazaros Varvarezos has left DCU to return to Greece for military service and continue to build his career in AMO physics. We thank Lazaros for the huge scientific contribution that he made at DCU and MUT-Warsaw during his doctoral and postdoctoral work and wish him every success in the future. We will continue to collaborate with him.

 

 

08-12-2023 John Costello received the Richard O’Kennedy (Overall) Award for 2023. It is the highest honour that the Faculty of Science and Health bestows on a research active member each year.

 

 

16-11-2023 Seamus Cummins has a piece on the RTE Brainstorm website on lasers – an integral part of our SFI and SEAI/ESB supported projects. You can find it here.

 

 

17-10-2023 New paper by Seamus Cummins et al. published by Spectrochimica Acta B on LIBS with Machine Learning for contaminant detection on wind turbine blades. Download it here - the paper is free to download - gold open access.

 

 

01-10-2023 Aoife Butler has joined the group as an intern for her final year project. She will work with Stephen Durkan on spatially profiling the beam from a 13.5 nm (90 eV) light source comprised of a laser plasma with Mo-Si multilayer mirrors (MLMs).

 

 

05-09-2023 James and Seamus are presenting posters at the 12th Euro-Mediterranean Symposium on Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy Conference (EMSLIBS2023), Porto, Portugal this week.

 

 

02-08-2023 Stephen and Lazaros (Ares) are presenting posters at the 15th Femtochemistry Conference (FEMTO 15), Berlin, Germany this week.

 

 

25-07-2023 25th Stephen and Ross have posters at the International Symposium on the Photochemistry and Photophysics of Coordination Compounds (ISPPCC 2023), Ulm, Germany this week.

 

 

18-07-2023 It was on the 18^th of July 2011 that the EACEA informed us that the EXTATIC EMJD was to be funded. With 30 alums from Africa, Asia and Europe (http://www.extatic.eu/profiles/alumni-profiles) my colleagues (http://www.extatic.eu/consortium) can be very proud of their achievements. The only sad note of the programme was the untimely loss of Prof. Alan Michette RIP, Kings College London, (https://www.euvlitho.com/2013/S54.pdf) who played a key role in seeding the idea and co-writing the proposal.

 

 

06- 03-2023 Seamus Cummins has a piece on the RTE Brainstorm website on our SEAI / ESB supported ‘laser blade cleaning’ project on wind turbines. You can find it here.

 

 

27-02-2023 Prof. Charles Clark, NIST and University of Maryland visited DCU while travelling from Merton College Oxford back to the USA. He gave a talk on Supernavigators and animal optical vision sto 100 Leaving Certificate school children followed by a talk on structured optical and neutron beams from his work at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland. 

 

 

 

Click here for old news items

 

 

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

 

160+ Refereed Publications

 

300+ Conference Abstracts

 

30+   Conference Papers

 

Nature Photonics News and Views Articles

 

 

PNAS Commentary

 

Various other contributions, e.g., to the Irish Scientist magazine.

 

 

Some TALKS

 

Recent talks (up to 20 MB ppt/pdf files !!) given at:

Invited - CFEL Hamburg Colloqium on colliding plasmas, February 6^th 2015. Download

 

Invited - School of Physics, University College Dublin, March 5^th 2015. Download

 

Invited - 4^th CDAMOP, Delhi, March 12^th, 2015. Download

 

Invited - “The future of ion spectroscopy at FLASH”, DESY, Hamburg, June 2^nd, 2015. Download

 

Invited - SFI schools talk [Download] given to Transition Year Students in:  

Magh Ene College, Bundoran, Co. Donegal, January 25^th 2016-06-03

 

COST MP1208 Meeting, Belgrade, April 18^th 2016 [Download]  

 

Invited - All Ireland Conference on Quantum Technologies, Maynooth University, June 1^st 2016 [Download]  

 

Invited - Institute of Advanced Studies of the TUM, Munich 12^th September 2016 [Download]  

 

Invited - SFI ISCA Ireland-Japan Workshop UCD November 4^th 2016 [Download]  

 

Invited - CONUL – Consortium of National and University Libraries. Talk preceding discourse on Open Access, May 31^st 2017 at CONUL 2017 – [Download]  

 

Invited - School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, UK, June 22, 2017 [Download]  

 

Photonics Ireland, Galway, September 13, 2017 [Download]  

 

Invited - Colloquium, Kassel University, Germany, December 14, 2017 [Download]

 

President’s Research Award Day, February 22, 2017 – View the talk here

 

COST Action CA17126 – TUMIEE, Porto, Portugal, March 4, 2019 [Download]

 

Invited - SEAI/SFI MaREI Workshop – Online from NUIG Galway, December 2, 2020 [Download]

 

Invited - Silver Jubilee Webinar Series, International School of Photonics (ISP), Cochin University of Science and Technology, India - March 19th 2021 [Download] – Youtube link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppxDqOtNWPw

 

Invited - IFATI4 Meeting on Industry 4.0 at Tokushima University, Japan, 8^th November, 2021 [Download]

 

Invited - Plenary invited talk on VUV Dual Laser Plasma Photoabsorption Spectroscopy (DLPPS) or Transient Absorption-LIBS at the EMSLIBS conference in Gijon, Spain, November 29^th, 2021 [Download]

 

Invited seminar on VUV LIBS at CEITEC, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic, December 9^th, 2021 [Download]

 

Talk at the 25^th ICSLS Conference, Caserta, Italy, June 19 – 24, 2022 [Download]

 

Talk at the TUMIEE CA17126 EU COST Action, Crete, Greece, July 18, 2022 [Download]

 

Invited - Talk at the LIBS XII conference in Bari, Italy, September 5 – 9, 2022

[Download]

 

Invited - Talk at Frontiers of Measurement Technology, Belfast,  Queens University, June 20-21, 2023 [Download]

 

Invited - Talk at 32^nd Annual Physics Conference - LPHYS‘24, IFSC, Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, July 3 - 9, 2024 [Download]

 

 

MEET (AT LEAST SOME OF) US AT:

 

2024

TU-Munich (E11)                   Munich (February 5 – 12, 2024)

LPHYS24                              Sao Carlos, Brazil (July 3 – 9, 2024)

TU-Munich (E11)                   Munich (September 23 – 30, 2024)

 

2023

DESY/XFEL Users                Hamburg (January 23 – 27, 2023)

SEAI Energy Show               RDS, Dublin (March 29 – 30, 2023)

IOP Ireland Meeting              Armagh, NI (11 March 2023)

UK XFEL Townhall                QUB, Belfast, NI (20 – 21 June 2023)

25^th ISPPCC                         Ulm, Germany (July 25 – 29, 2023)

(International Symposium on the Photochemistry and Photophysics of Coordination Compounds)

FEMTO15                             Berlin, Germany (July 30 – August 4, 2023)

12th EMSLIBS                      Porto, Portugal (September 4 – 7, 2023)

 

2022

DESY/XFEL Users                Online from Hamburg (January 21 – 27, 2022)

25^th ICSLS                            Caserta, Italy (June 19 – 24, 2022)

14^th ECAMP                          Vilnius, Lithuania (June 27 – July 1, 2022)

EU COST (CA17126)            Crete, Greece (July 18, 2022)

LIBS XII                                Bari, Italy (September 5 – 9, 2022)

SFI Summit                           Strand Hotel, Limerick, Ireland (November 21 – 22, 2022)

 

2021

DESY/XFEL Users                Online from Hamburg (January 29 – 31, 2021)

47^th IOP Plas Phys Div          Online from London (April 6 – 9, 2021)

9^th Photonics Ireland             Online from Dublin (June 14 – 16, 2021)

32nd ICPEAC                       Online from Ottawa (July 20 – 23, 2021)

EOSAM 2021                        Rome, Italy (September 13 – 17, 2021)

Adv. Tech. Ind. 4.0                Online from Tokushima Uni., Japan (Nov. 8, 2021)

11th EMSLIBS                      Gijon, Spain (November 29 – December 2, 2021)

Seminar, CEITAC                 Brno, Czech Republic (December 8 – 10, 2021)

 

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

 

Research Affiliations

National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology, Dublin City University

Nano-bio-analytical Research Facility (NRF), Dublin City University

 

Current Research Interests

1. Fast and ultrafast laser matter interaction

2. Laser ablation and LIBS

3. Vis/ UV, Extreme-UV and soft X-ray imaging and spectroscopy

4. Fundamental photoionization processes with EUV and X-ray free electron lasers (FELs)

 

 

 

Click here for equipment list

 

 

 

Current Research Projects

Science Foundation Ireland: Research Infrastructure Programme and Frontiers for the Future.

 

Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland: Research Development and Demonstration (RDD) Programme

 

 

1. Laser Ablation for Wind Turbine Blade Contaminant Classification, Quantification and Removal

DCU:                   James Campbell, Séamus Cummins and Lazaros Varvarezos

UCD:                   Ross Murray, Paddy Hayden and Padraig Dunne

UofG:                  Jamie Goggins and William Finnegan

ESB:                   David Burke, Cathal Lally and John Walsh

                 

 

 

2. EUV and Ultrafast Spectroscopy for EUVL Materials

DCU:          Stephen Durkan and Ross McGarry and Mary Pryce

TUM:          Hristo Iglev, Daniel Sandner and Reini Kienberger

MUT:          Andrzej Bartnik, Henryk Fiedorowicz and Przemyslaw Wachulak

INTEL:       James Blackwell and Matt Shaw

Ioannina:    Lazaros Varvarezos

 

 

Laser Plasma and AMO Physics PIs at DCU:     

Assoc Prof. L. Nikolopoulos, Assoc. Prof. J-P. Mosnier, Assoc. Prof. Paul  van Kampen and Prof. E. T. Kennedy (Emeritus)

 

 

Current Research Students

1. James Campbell (Funded by SEAI)

Laser Ablation for Wind Turbine Blade Contaminant Classification, Quantification and Removal

 

2. Séamus Cummins (Funded by SEAI)

Laser Ablation for Wind Turbine Blade Contaminant Classification, Quantification and Removal

 

3. Stephen Durkan (Funded by SFI)

Dynamics of new materials for EUVL

 

4. Ross McGarry (Funded by SFI)

Dynamics of new materials for EUVL (Joint with Mary Pryce)

 

5. Ross Murray (Funded by SEAI)

Laser Ablation for Wind Turbine Blade Contaminant Classification, Quantification and Removal (Supervisors Paddy Hayden and Padraig Dunne [UCD])

 

 

 

 

List of ‘EXTATIC’ Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctoral Fellows (JC PI & Programme Coordinator)

 

 

 

                                                              

Past Visiting Research Students (EU MC, HEA North-South, SFI, UPPI, Naughton-Notre Dame & Other)

 

Nely Parvanova (Sofia)    

Philip Orr (Belfast)                    

Domenico Doria (Lecce)                    

Floralice Miroiu (Bucharest)

Alice Delserieys (Belfast)

Nadia Gambino (Catania)

Ricarda Laasch (Hamburg)

Julien Witz (Paris-Palaiseau)

Raman Namboodiri (Chennai)

Sudhakara Reddy (Chennai)

Ravi Singh (Kanpur)

Shyam Gupta (Kanpur)

Irene Maria Carrasco Garcia (Malaga)

Aparna Neettiyath (Chennai)

Sean Howard (Notre Dame)

Robert Black (Notre Dame)

Patrick Colley (Notre Dame)

 

 

Former SFI STARs (Teachers)      Former SFI UREKA Students

Dee Kilbane (2007 & 2008)                     Mossy Kelly (AP3 – 2007)

Stephen Chaney (2008)

 

Deirdre is now Research Director at the SETU Walton Institute

Mossy is now Assistant Professor at the Atlantic Technological University (ATU)

Stephen changed careers and is now a medical doctor/general practitioner

 

 

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