Speakers 2018 Brief Bio's

Dr. Graham Love Keynote Speaker

Dr. Graham Love is the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Authority. Previously he led the Health Research Board and held senior management positions in a variety of organisations including Science Foundation Ireland and Accenture. He is a former member of the Science Gallery Board, Science Europe’s Governing Council and Enterprise Ireland’s Industrial Research & Commercialisation Committee.

Professor Anita Maguire

 Vice President for Research & Innovation, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Co-PI Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre (SSPC), University College Cork

 Anita undertook undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Chemistry at UCC (B.Sc. 1985, Ph.D. 1989). Following postdoctoral research first at Namur, Belgium then at the University of Exeter, UK she returned to the Department of Chemistry in UCC in 1991, initially as a College Lecturer, then Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry in 2002, and was appointed in 2004 to the newly-established Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, jointly in the Department of Chemistry and the School of Pharmacy, playing a leading role in development of the School of Pharmacy. Since her appointment at UCC she has played a strategic role in the development of teaching and learning, including the introduction of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at undergraduate level for the first time.

Over the past twenty seven years at UCC she has led an active research team focusing on synthetic organic and pharmaceutical chemistry, which interacts extensively with the pharmaceutical sector in Ireland and internationally. She is very committed to postgraduate education, ensuring the research students gain the skills required to underpin their future careers; 43 PhD and 6 MSc students have graduated from her research team since 1997, most of whom have developed careers within the pharmaceutical industry both in Ireland and internationally.

Her research interests in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry include development of new synthetic methodology, asymmetric synthesis including biocatalysis, and the design and synthesis of bioactive compounds with pharmaceutical applications.

She is Director of the interdisciplinary research centre, the Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility established under PRTLI3, and co-PI in the Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre, leading the UCC involvement in this Centre led by the University of Limerick.  She has served as Head of the Department of Chemistry (2005-7) and Head of the School of Pharmacy (2009-10). She was elected to the Governing Body of University College Cork in December 2003 and served two terms until December 2011. She was appointed as Vice President for Research and Innovation in January 2011 and reappointed for a second term from March 2016. She was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2014.

She is actively engaged nationally in strategic policy development in relation to research policy, STI policy, the academic industry interface and strategic development of the pharmaceutical industry, including as a member of the Advisory Science Council and the Irish Research Council. For example, she chaired the Advisory Science Council Task Force on The Role of PhDs in the Smart Economy. She chaired the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) until it merged with the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) to form the Irish Research Council. 

She is a member of the Boards of Tyndall National Institute, Molecular Medicine Ireland, Insight, APC, Infant, IPIC, Amber, MaREI, and ICHEC. She was appointed as the inaugural Chair of the National Forum on Research Integrity in 2015.

Internationally she is a member of the Management Board of the National Research Network in Health and Life Sciences (Wales), one of just two international members on the board.  She was an Adjunct Professor in the University of Bergen 2011-16. She was Chairman of the EU COST Management Committee for Action D12 concerning 'Organic Transformations: Selective Processes and Asymmetric Catalysis'.

Professor Fergus Shanahan

 Fergus Shanahan is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University College Cork (UCC), National University of Ireland.  Born and educated in Dublin, he attended medical school at University College Dublin graduating with honours in 1977 and was awarded a gold medal in medicine from the Mater University Hospital.  After internship and residency in internal medicine in Dublin, he completed two fellowships, the first in clinical immunology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, followed by a fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  He was appointed to the faculty at UCLA in 1985 rising to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure before returning to Ireland in 1993. 

Dr. Shanahan is the foundation director of the APC Microbiome Institute which was established in 2003 with funding from Science Foundation Ireland and grants from industry and which investigates host-microbe interactions in the gut in health and disease.  Under his directorship, the centre has achieved worldwide recognition and has grown to a membership of >250 staff, scientists, and students.

Dr. Shanahan has published more than 500 scientific papers including several on the medical humanities and has co-edited numerous books.  He has several patents and is a co-founder of three university start-up companies which continue as a source of over 45 high tech jobs in the Cork region. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom as well as of the American College of Physicians.  He served as President of the Irish Society of Gastroenterology from 2007-2009, was named to the “Irish Life Science 50” a list of the top 50 Irish and Irish Americans in the life science industry and has received the Irish Society of Immunology biennial medal and public lectureship award. He was the first recipient of the Hektoen international medical humanities grand prix for an essay entitled ‘Waiting’.  In 2013, Science Foundation Ireland named him as its Researcher of the Year. He was awarded a DSc for published work on mucosal immunology by the National University of Ireland in 2014. He was also acknowledged with an honorary DSc. from his alma mater, University College Dublin, in 2015. The Royal Irish Academy (RIA) honoured him with a gold medal for contributions to the life sciences (2016) and he was elected to membership of the RIA in 2017.

His interests are in mucosal immunology, gut microbiota, inflammatory bowel disease, and most things that affect the human experience.

Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir

Brian Ó Gallachóir is Professor of Energy Engineering in University College Cork's School of Engineering and Vice-Director of UCC's Environmental Research Institute. He is also Director of the national SFI MaREI Centre, an energy and marine-based research, development and innovation hub. Brian is the elected Chair of the Executive Committee for the International Energy Agency's Technology Collaboration Programme on energy systems modelling (IEA-ETSAP). Brian's research focus is on building and using integrated energy systems models to inform energy and climate change mitigation policy. His research has been published extensively and has directly informed policy decisions. He is also a member of the national Gas Innovation Group in Ireland. Brian has a B.Sc. (Applied Sciences) from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD (Wave Energy Hydrodynamics) from UCC.

Dr Rosarii Griffin

Dr Rosarii Griffin is Chair of UCCRSA (Researcher Staff Association), Director of ICoRSA (International Consortium of Research Staff Associations) and an elected Governor of UCC’s Governing Authority. Rosarii teaches ‘Research Methods’ and ‘Project Management skills’ in Adult Continuing Education, UCC. She is also an executive board member on UCC’s Centre for Global Development (CGD). Rosarii’s award-winning doctorate from Oxford University focused on ‘International and Comparative Education’. She has since published five books on the area of ‘Education for Global Development’. Rosarii is currently working on two international research projects: 1) A research capacity building project in Higher Education in Malawi; and 2) an EU ‘Responsible Research Innovation’ (RRING) Horizon 2020 project of which she is project manager. Rosarii is also a longstanding Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, UK. 

Professor Peter Gallagher