There are numerous postgraduate programmes to choose from at DIT, any of which will give you the skills you need to excel in your field

Following his investigation into ways to identify athletes at risk of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, Dr Gerard King, chief cardiac technician at the CREST Directorate in St James’s Hospital, graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) with Ireland’s first clinical science PhD in echocardiography.

Meanwhile Dan Barry, a 26-year-old PhD student at DIT, may be on the cusp of solving one of the most common irritations of modern life — people shouting into mobile phones in public to make themselves heard above the background noise.

Through his postgraduate research in DIT, Barry has pioneered a method to separate out the mobile user’s voice, not just from sounds such as machine noise or passing vehicles, but also from other people’s voices. In fact, the algorithm he has developed for this purpose is so effective that it is already exciting feverish interest in the international mobile phone industry.

King and Barry are examples of what postgraduate study at DIT can lead to. As a doctoral-awarding body, DIT has consciously increased its postgraduate provision over the past five years and now offers 45 postgraduate taught programmes with a significant career focus.

Some programmes are conversion courses for graduates of any discipline who wish to obtain expertise in another area. DIT offers postgraduate conversion courses in engineering computation, marketing, business entrepreneurship, advertising, public relations, journalism, accounting, media studies and legal studies.

A postgraduate continuation course, on the other hand, allows students to build on their primary degrees and develop expertise in their disciplines. DIT offers a broad selection of such courses in: sustainable development; regional and local development; spatial planning; strategic management; engineering; computer science; molecular pathology; pharmaceuticals; accounting; mathematics; food safety; environmental health; music; criminology; fine art; tourism management; and hospitality. DIT also offers an MBA driven by demand in booming areas of the economy such as large-scale project development and entrepreneurship.

You can also choose to undertake postgraduate study by research — the route taken by both King and Barry. DIT has a growing tradition of collaborative research projects with universities, research institutes, industrial, commercial, professional and government organisations in Ireland, the EU and internationally.

It provides a selection of topical, cutting-edge, industry-focused research projects across all disciplines including marketing, media studies, physics, food science, engineering and biological sciences.

In response to ever-changing market demands, DIT consistently develops and introduces new programmes. For example, it has just introduced a one-year full-time or two-year part-time postgraduate programme in criminology. The course is designed for professionals in criminal justice such as gardaí, prison officers, social workers and journalists. DIT introduced it to address the lack of specialised taught programmes in the field in Ireland. Until now, students wishing to study criminology had to go abroad.

To find out more about postgraduate study options at DIT see www.dit.ie