I LOVE Sundays. I try to be the first one up in the house, I'll sneak out for a walk down Dun Laoghaire pier and then come back and make breakfast. Sunday morning is very like Saturday morning; Maurice [Treacy] and I will be running around taking the kids . . . Molly (12) Hugo (9) and Ted (6) . . . to hockey and rugby matches and cheering them on from the sidelines.

Once we're back home, I'll be trying to achieve the impossible by listening to the radio, reading the papers and spending quality time with the children. I'll make it to the gym at some point, and usually to one o'clock mass in Dun Laoghaire . . . the organ is fantastic and I love the modernity of the church.

Then we usually end up at itsabagel for lunch . . . the allday cure for Maurice and lentil soup and a toasted poppy seed bagel for me.

We come home via the market in the People's Park . . . the spices man can't quite believe how many cumin and mustard seeds we get through in a week. I stand by the olive stall with my eyes closed, breathing in the good smells and thinking I could be somewhere foreign.

There's a great flower stall too, plenty of unusual thistley type blooms. That's the most shopping I'll do on a Sunday . . . the idea of spending the day in Dundrum or Liffey Valley holds no appeal. I have to travel a fair bit for work though and if I find myself in the US with a few hours to spare then I might make an exception.

In the afternoon we head out together . . . up Killiney Hill or the Sugarloaf if the weather's good, in to the National Gallery or a museum if it's wet. The boys got walkie talkies for Christmas so they like Killiney Hill best . . . the possibilities for adventure are good with the quarry, the fallen trees and the secret paths.

Come early evening we'll meet up with family for a meal, sometimes at our house, sometimes at theirs.

My mother, Binnie, is a fantastic cook . . . she was a foodie before there were foodies in Ireland, so we all love going to her house. We lived abroad for a long time and I think that one of the main reasons we came back was so that the children could have these kind of Sundays.

It's taken me a while to realise that the key to a good Sunday is having all the uniforms and bags and sports kits sorted out on Friday or Saturday . . . it really ruins Sunday if we leave it until then. Once the kids have gone to bed and ERstarts, the laptops appear and Maurice and I will sit on the sofas and start getting ready for the week ahead. I have no dread of Mondays . . . the science world is such an exciting global community and the work that we're doing in UCD is at the forefront of research. I'm never in bed before midnight, often later . . . five hours sleep is plenty.

Professor Catherine Godson is vice president, Innovation and Corporate Partnerships, UCD