Niall English

Professor Niall English is a leading academic at University College Dublin's College of Engineering & Architecture, specifically within the School of Chemical & Bioprocess Engineering. With over 20 years of dedicated research in gas hydrate systems, his work bridges fundamental science and industrial applications, particularly in climate change mitigation and wastewater treatment innovation.

His research focuses on gas hydrate kinetics, methane emissions, and microbial regulation of hydrate stability, with groundbreaking contributions to understanding the relationship between Earth's magnetic field reversals and historical mass extinction events (the 'Belfast hypothesis'). Key interests include:

• Nanobubble engineering for industrial wastewater treatment
• Electromagnetic field effects on chemical processes
• Microbial-peptide regulation of gas hydrates
• Climate change implications of Arctic hydrate destabilization

Professor English's recent publications (2024-2025) reveal a strong trend toward environmentally sustainable applications, particularly electric-field nanobubble technologies for wastewater treatment, biogas upgrading, and carbon capture. His work demonstrates significant cross-disciplinary integration of computational chemistry, environmental engineering, and geophysics.

He received the Leverhulme Trust Research Project Award (2021-2023) for 'Exploring the potential for biocatalytic gas-hydrate formation (BioGHF)', reflecting the international recognition of his work. His commercialization efforts include two spin-out companies: Aqua-B (CEO) for nanobubble wastewater treatment and BioSimulytics for pharmaceutical crystal-structure prediction software.

Professor English actively collaborates with Queen's University Belfast microbiologist Professor Chris Allen, filing joint patents for regulating gas hydrate growth using proteins and peptide sequences. Their research targets the $1 trillion wastewater treatment industry, aiming to solve challenges in processing heavily polluted water through hydrate-based separation techniques.