Invasive species are an escalating global issue, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and economies. Research at Queen's University Belfast is uncovering the true costs of these biological invasions, paving the way for informed policy and better management practices to mitigate the damage.
Experts in Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Earth and Marine Sciences at Queen's have collaborated with both national and international partners to focus on predicting and mitigating the spread and impact of invasive species. The research has identified invasion hotspots, emphasising the influence of climate change, human activity, and habitat connectivity. It has also highlighted the economic costs, exposing the billions of pounds in damages annually due to invasive species.
This research has significantly advanced the understanding and management of invasive species. The predictions and insights generated by this work are being utilised by policymakers, environmental managers, and conservationists worldwide. The research is expected to lead to improved policy frameworks, more effective management strategies, and heightened awareness of the economic and ecological risks posed by invasive species.
Find out more about Queen's research into climate and environmental threats.
This research at Queen's exemplifies the critical role of multidisciplinary collaboration, global data, and modelling in managing biological invasions.
By developing robust approaches and providing actionable recommendations, this research is making a tangible difference in protecting biodiversity and mitigating the impacts of invasive species.
Invasive species – organisms introduced by humans to new environments that harm the environment, economy, and society – are a growing problem worldwide.

Queen's University Belfast is working with farmers to co-create solutions to reduce their carbon footprint, including carbon storage and sequestration.
It is widely understood that methane emissions from livestock is a significant contributory factor to climate change. Recent research in Australia and the US identified a red seaweed variety that saw an 80% reduction in methane emissions when added to cattle’s feed in small quantities. This seaweed only grows in tropical areas and contains high levels of bromoform – known to be damaging to the ozone layer. Researchers at Queen’s have focused on finding a local seaweed alternative that produces similar results but doesn’t pose a risk to the ozone layer or require transportation and the associated carbon footprint.
The research at Queen's has shown promising results using native Irish and UK seaweeds. Sharon Huws, Professor of Animal Science and Microbiology at Queen’s, is expecting the combined research to evidence a reduction in GHG emissions of at least 30%.
Learn more about how researchers at Queen's are helping reduce methane emissions in farming.
Researchers at Queen’s have been feeding native seaweed supplements to cattle in a bid to reduce methane emissions by at least 30%.
Researchers at Queen’s are assessing the nutritional value of homegrown seaweeds, their effects on animal productivity, and meat quality.
Early laboratory research has shown promising results in terms of reducing methane emissions. Due to increased levels of iodine in the milk of seaweed-fed cows, researchers are now embarking on dairy trials, providing this milk to people with iodine deficiencies.

Queen’s University Belfast draws on the city’s unique history to produce world-class research into building cohesive societies. This research helps post-conflict countries around the globe to navigate dealing with the past and moving forward together.
Researchers at Queen's are conducting cutting-edge research into the issue of Shared Education and have provided the basis for a model of collaboration between Protestant and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland, focused on promoting reconciliation and school improvement.
More than 90% of schools in Northern Ireland are segregated on religious grounds, operating with parallel systems for Catholics and Protestants. This segregated education system sustains cultural estrangement.
The Centre for Shared Education at Queen's began as a pilot programme with just 12 schools in 2007. Shared Education has grown in over a decade to more than 700 schools and over 60,000 pupils now involved in regular, shared classes with Schools from different denominations.
Learn more about the International impact this research has made to encourage Shared Education across the world.
Queen's Centre for Shared Education was established in May 2012 to promote shared education as a mechanism for the delivery of reconciliation and educational benefits to all children.
The impact of this work is being felt not only in Northern Ireland but across the world.
In 2019 Queen's was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its work on shared education and the impact of this work in Northern Ireland and internationally.

Queen’s University Belfast has been conducting ground-breaking research into the development of ionic liquids (liquid salts) and their applications in green chemistry for over 20 years. QUILL (Queen’s University Ionic Liquid Laboratories) carries out fundamental studies on the design and performance of ionic liquids, as well as their application in industrial processes. QUILL was the first research centre in the world to focus on the development of ionic liquids and can now be considered as world leading.
Researchers at Queen’s led a team that designed, synthesised, and tested materials based on active ionic liquids incorporated into porous solids for the treatment of contaminated gas streams at laboratory scale, this technology later became known as HycaPure™.
HycaPure™ is an ionic liquid which removes mercury contaminants from natural gas. The technology was developed in a partnership between QUILL and PETRONAS, the national oil and gas company of Malaysia. The success of this collaboration has won multiple awards and provided public awareness of the benefits of ionic liquids.
Read more to find out this cutting-edge ionic liquid research.
QUILL was the first research centre in the world to focus on the development of ionic liquids.
HycaPure™ Hg is a robust, long-life solid-supported ionic liquid mercury removal technology.
This research developed from concept to commercialisation in less than four years, which is twice as fast as the industry norm.
QUILL and Petronas have embarked on a new £2,400,000 joint programme on innovative low carbon technologies.

Queen’s University Belfast are leading the way in prostate cancer research with a multidisciplinary group focusing on clinical and laboratory science to help improve the lives of patients using innovative treatments.
Prostate cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the UK. As of 2023, approximately 52,800 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually, and over 12,000 men die from it each year in the UK. In response to this, academics at Queen's created the Advanced Radiotherapy Group (ARG), a multi-disciplinary group with the goal to improve clinical outcomes for patients.
The Group focusses on clinical trials of novel therapeutics in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, and its precursor, metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer, as well as advanced radiotherapy in localised prostate cancer.
This research has led to a number of impacts, including contributing in the registration trial for the first FDA-approved alpha particle Radium-223. This resulted in prolonged overall survival and improved quality of life for prostate cancer patients. Research at Queen's has also resulted in men receiving fewer treatments with the same results, leading to less disruption to their lives, including a reduction in hospital visits, with an average saving of 17 visits per patient. It is estimated that this will save the NHS in England at least £8,000,000 per year.
Read more about the impact this research at Queen's University has made for prostate cancer patients.
Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed malignancy in the UK; 52,800 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually, and over 12,000 men die from it each year in the UK.
This research at Queen's played a major role in the registration trial for the first FDA-approved alpha particle Radium-223, known as Xofigo ®.
This research has resulted in prolonged overall survival and improved quality of life for men with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer.

Researchers at Queen's help tackle the global challenges of our age, changing people’s lives for the better.We are a world-class international university built on teaching excellence, leading-edge research, innovation, collaboration and engagement.
Queen’s has a proud history of conducting innovative, impactful and world-leading research that has positively changed people’s lives. Our ambition for 2030 is to further enhance our impact by strengthening our research position and working with industry to broaden our translational impact and innovation, ensuring we deliver high-quality, world-leading research, which addresses local and global challenges.

The Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) is a national cybersecurity research institute based at Queen’s emphasising research excellence combined with a unique model for, and focus on, commercialisation and innovation.
CSIT plays a key role in Northern Ireland’s cybersecurity ecosystem through the development of incubator programmes, start-ups and attracting foreign direct investment which had led to the creation of approximately 1600 jobs in this sector.
CSIT's mission is to produce significant high-quality impactful research in four key research areas:
- Secure connected services
- Networked security systems
- Industrial control systems
- Security intelligence
CSIT couples major research breakthroughs in the field of secure information technologies with a unique model of innovation and commercialisation to drive economic and societal impact. Cyber security challenges have grown exponentially in the last decade. A safe and secure cyberspace is fundamental to making the UK the safest place in the world to live and work online.
Industry engagement is at the heart of CSIT. Its unique membership model has seen the development of longstanding advisory and industrial collaborations with global partners including Altera, Allstate, BAE Systems, Cisco, Citi, Direct Line Group, First Derivatives, IBM, Infosys, Intel, McAfee, Roke, Seagate and Thales. This unique Open Innovation model allows research to translate to industry in an agile way, ensuring demonstrable technology is in the hands of end users quickly.

Researchers from Queen’s have transformed the lives of people with Cystic Fibrosis by leading on the clinical development of treatments that address the underlying genetic disorder.
Cystic Fibrosis is a progressive, life-limiting genetic disease that causes severe respiratory and digestive problems as well as other complications such as infections and diabetes.
There are over 80,000 people living with Cystic Fibrosis globally, including 10,500 in the UK accounting for 9,500 hospital admissions and over 100,000 bed days per year.
The condition is caused by a mutation in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene which is responsible for the regulation of salt and water levels in the body. The mutations can lead to the build-up of thick mucus in the lungs, digestive tract and other parts of the body causing persistent chest infections, resulting in lung damage and an early death.
Queen’s University’s Cystic Fibrosis research team is recognised as world leading, having worked for over 12 years supporting the development of drugs that improve the function of CTFR. during the last decade, Queen’s University Belfast has been at the forefront of major advancements in drugs targeting the underlying genetic deficit.
This work included the development of clinical trial protocols, and inclusion of key outcome measures such as; lung function (FEV1), pulmonary exacerbation rate, and Quality of Life (QoL) tools for use in clinical trials of new therapeutics.
Extensive clinical trial experience coupled with a Clinical Trial Network infrastructure established by Queen’s and the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, resulted in Queen’s playing a pivotal role in a drug development programme working alongside Vertex Pharmaceuticals to deliver trials for single, double and triple therapies in Cystic Fibrosis.
1. There are over 80,000 people living with Cystic Fibrosis globally, including 10,500 in the UK - accounting for 9,500 hospital admissions and over 100,000 bed days per year.
2 The most recent trials successfully demonstrated that a combination of drugs can treat up to 90% of people with Cystic Fibrosis by addressing the underlying cause of their disease.

The 2008 dioxin crisis, in which Irish pork was contaminated through their feed with this highly toxic chemical, resulted in approximately 30,000 tonnes of pig meat product being recalled and destroyed.
The contamination was eventually detected by the national monitoring program leading to multiple farm closures, major animal welfare issues, and a global recall of Irish pork, resulting in the loss of an estimated 1,800 jobs. The incident was estimated to have cost the economy of island of Ireland over EUR120,000,000.
Professor Chris Elliott and his team at Queen’s were approached by the feed sector to identify ways of preventing the occurrence of such catastrophic feed-related contamination in the future.
Queen’s University leads an intensive research programme to develop, validate and implement innovative techniques to detect and monitor a broad spectrum of feed-related contaminants, which when incorporated within a risk-based sampling approach, providing a supply chain-wide quality assurance scheme.
The ‘Food Fortress’ scheme was launched by Queen’s as a pilot in 2014 with 19 large animal feed companies involved.
Read more here about how The Food Fortress scheme increased the level of testing for all high-risk chemical contaminants by over 500% without any additional industrial costs.

Researchers within Queen’s University Belfast have had a profound, sustained and multi-layered impact upon the legal, policy and public understanding of dealing with the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict.
Researchers at Queen’s produced a significant body of research in transitional justice, the interdisciplinary field that addresses how societies deal with legacies of violence and human rights abuses. Their research has explored key themes including how to effect change in transitional justice through expert mobilisation ‘from below’, how to encourage effective truth recovery through amnesties, immunity and sentence reduction and the value added of oral history to reconciliation.
The research team’s work has directly influenced the recent debates on legacy.
The team’s local and international research on amnesties, truth recovery, and the value-added of oral history to transitional justice has directly influenced efforts to deal with the past in Northern Ireland since 2014.
Working in partnership with the Belfast based human rights NGO, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), researchers have produced a substantial body of policy-focused research which has directly impacted political negotiations in Northern Ireland, UK draft legislation, and the recent deliberations of parliamentary select committees in the UK on legacy in Northern Ireland.
Key provisions of the government’s Draft Northern Ireland Stormont House Agreement Bill 2018 were directly influenced by the research team’s ‘Model Bill’.

Researchers from Queen’s, in collaboration with Wrightbus have developed best-in-class low and zero emissions technologies playing a key role in decarbonising UK and international public transport.
The UK Government’s “Road to Zero” strategy laid out its ambition for all new cars and vans to be effectively zero emission by 2040, as well as schemes to encourage low emission public transport. Buses play a vital role in reducing emissions; one double-decker bus can potentially replace 75 cars. In inner cities, the stop/start conditions and slower speeds mean that older diesel vehicles in particular can emit significant levels of local pollutants.
Hybrid electric vehicle architectures are key in this transition to ultra-low and ultimately zero-emissions solutions.
In collaboration with Wrightbus, Queen’s University developed state-of-the-art system modeling approaches for hybrid vehicles on the development of the New Bus for London powertrain. The success of the London Bus project led directly to the £3,200,000 Innovate UK funded project “Next Generation Hybrid Bus” (NextGenHEV)