Who am I?

My name is Aidan Doyle and I was born on the 6th of May 2002 in Orleans, France. This website was originally a creation because I was bored during the summer but I have now grown quite fond of it so I will keep updating it as time goes on.

I orinally grew up in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, where I had my early years of schooling and I learned to speak fluent Dutch. From there I moved to Sydney, where I spent a lot of my formative early highschool years at Aquinas Catholic College in Menai, before in 2017 moving Ireland with my Family.

I am a recent graduate from Trinity College Dublin where I completed my masters in Quantum Physics (see more below), and I also have a bachelors degree in Theoretical Physics & Mathematics from Maynooth University.

In my spare time I play a lot of sports. I am currently a member of Avoca hockey club, but I have also played for Amsterdan hockey club and Sutherland hockey club in my younger years. I'm also an avid cricket player, where I spent last season competing with Dublin-University Cricket Club for another promotion. I also unfortunately spend far too much of my money playing golf. I am member in Wicklow Golf Club, which is one of the most stunning courses on the east coast of Ireland.

I also spend far too much of my time as a hockey coach. I currently coach two teams in Avoca and am one of the starting members of the most successful goalkeeper academy in the country. I run goalkeeper academy sessions for hockey Ireland. I am also the team manager for the Leinster Hockey u18 Boys, which recently won the interprovincial championships.

I have other interesting things about me but I'll put them on different pages.

My Undergraduate Degree

I graduated from my undergraduate degree (BSc) Theoretical Physics & Mathematics with a 2.1 second class honors. Graduating with a tiny class of only 10 people, I am very grateful to Maynooth University for providing such a unique course which cannot be found anywhere else in Ireland.

The degree (course code MH206) comprises of a 50/50 split between Theoretical Physics and Pure Mathematics. It starts off incredibly difficult, thrusting students into second and third year modules with the expectation that there will be significant self study done to catch up. If you are looking for a fun freshers week don't do this course.

In my personal experience, as you spend most of first year trying to catch up, there is little time to actually gain an understanding of the concepts taught. I felt almost forced to learn off how to use the formulas and do calculations to keep pace, and that was to my detriment in later years of the degree.

In the physics side we learned things such as the basics of ODEs, Quantum Mechanics 1 & 2, Electromagnetism and Cosmology. The Theoretical Physics department in particular was incredibly helpful during our studies, providing us with any assistance we needed.

The Mathematics part of the degree walked us through topics like Euclidian Geometry, Real and Complex Analysis and Topology. For anyone looking to study Pure Mathematics out of secondary school, I would make sure you do your research thoroughly. Pure Mathematics is nothing like the Maths you do in school, and is far more proof orientated, with many wordy demonstrations required on assignments.

My Masters Degree

I will be graduating from my masters degree (MSc) Quantum Science and Technology on the 24th of November 2025. I will be graduating with Distinction and achieved received a 1.1 First Class Honors on my thesis for my research internship, for which you can find information here or on my GitHub.

Similar to my undergrad the masters was a small enough course with only 18 people in it, and was a mix of quantum algorithms, quantum tech and quantum materials all thrown into one. Within the course, there was a significant emphasis on not only understanding, but also being able to explain what you are talking about. All end of Semester exams were defined as "Viva's", where we were expected to orally explain concepts and answer relevant questions. If nothing else, I feel a lot of physics courses could make good use of this type of examination. To progress further in physics, you will likely need to do a lot of presentations of your material and thus getting practice early could be quite useful.

While I did enjoy this course for the most part, I often felt like it wasn't particularly challenging, and left a lot to be desired in terms of the material that was covered. It came across as though they were more targeting computer scientists who had no physics background whatsoever and didn't understand the basics, rather than physics students who looked to go into research or something similar. The modules were often either far too dense, where you wouldn't have time to effectively go through most of the information and had to learn it off for the viva, or the modules were incredibly simple, covering contents that I had learned in the first and second year of my undergraduate degree.

To follow on from this, the coordinators of the course were an absolute mess. Multiple times I tried to have conversations with those in charge and I continually got pawned off to someone else, never actually managed to voice my concerns.

That being said I did really enjoy my research internship, completed with my professor Paul Eastham, with help from both Eoin O'neill and Carlos Ortega-Taberner. It gave a very real sense of what post-graduate research would look like.

Start of My Coaching Career

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single photo of me throughout my whole coaching career, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one.

I originally started my coaching career with Three-Rock-Rovers Hockey Club in September of 2017 at the age of 15. There was a bit of a mix up with regards to my first year of coaching. I was under the impression that I would be getting paid to come up and coach at 9am on a Sunday, however it turns out the coordinators had put me down as a Gaisce volenteer and thus I didn't get paid for my full first year of coaching. Non the less I enjoyed it and stuck with it. Coaching the u8s and u10s in my first two years was more like babysitting instead of coaching, but it still taught me valuable lessons in how to effectively communicate my ideas to those who don't really understand what you're talking about.

to be continued