The traditional ceremony honours individuals who have distinguished themselves nationally or internationally, through their scholarship, creativity, public service or contribution to social, cultural or economic life.

Professor Patrick Fottrell
Educator
Dr Patrick Fottrell has a strong scientific background and is Chairman of Science Foundation Ireland and the Research Board of St. Vincent's University Hospital. A native of Youghal, County Cork, he was educated at North Monastery and UCC. A former President of the National University of Ireland, (NUI) Galway, Dr Fottrell is a member and former Vice-President of the Royal Irish Academy. He received the Conway Medal from Ireland's Royal Academy of Medicine, and has been a visiting Professor at Harvard, Munich, and Asahikawa (Japan). He is a Board Member of Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority and Chairman of the Teagasc Research Committee. He is also a Board Member of Safefood, the Irish Food Safety Promotion Board. In addition, Dr Fottrell is currently Chairman of Westgate Biological Ltd and acts as consultant to a number of bio-technology companies.
He served as Chairman of the Dublin Institute of Technology, the Irish Council of Bioethics, the Irish Government Taskforce on Medical Education and the Ireland-USA Fulbright Commission. He has also served as vice-chancellor of Ireland's National University (1997-1999) and Chairman of the Council of Heads of Irish Universities (1999).
Dr Fottrell is to be bestowed with a Degree of Doctor of Science and his encomium will be delivered by Dr. James J. Browne, President NUIG.

Dr Michael Hyland
Consultant Geriatrician
Dr Michael Hyland graduated from UCC with a MB, BCh in 1958. He is currently Chairman of the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Cork Teaching Hospitals and a leading authority on geriatric medicine nationally and internationally. Since 1998, he has been a member of the PROSPER Study Executive Committee of Investigators.  From 1969-1999, he was Consultant Physician in Geriatric Medicine at St Finbarr's Hospital and lecturer in Medicine at UCC. He has also served as Chairman of the Irish Society of Physicians in Geriatric Medicine and as a member of the National Council for the Aged (Ireland).
Dr Hyland is to be bestowed with a Degree of Doctor of Medicine and his encomium will be delivered by Professor Davis Coakley, Professor of Medical Gerontology, TCD.

Niall Mellon
Philanthropist
Niall Mellon is an Irish based philanthropist and founder of "The Niall Mellon Township Challenge" which provides accommodation for the disadvantaged in South Africa. In 2002, at the age of 35, while visiting South Africa, he was so moved by the plight of the residents of Imizamo Yethu Township in Cape Town that he set up "The Niall Mellon Township Challenge", initially with his own funds. The charity has now become one of the world's largest house building charities.  In 2007, it was responsible for building some 5,000 houses.  Mr Mellon's efforts have earned him personal praise from many quarters, including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  He has also been honoured by Dublin City Council and was awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy by the Dublin Institute of Technology in 2005.
Mr Mellon is to be bestowed with a Degree of Doctor of Laws and his encomium will be delivered by Professor Denis Lucey, Head, College of Business & Law, UCC.

Samantha Power
Irish American journalist, writer, and academic
Professor Samantha Power is an internationally renowned academic who holds a Chair in Human Rights in Harvard. She is author of Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (Penguin Press, 2008), a biography of the UN envoy killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2003. Her book "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (New Republic Books) was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in US foreign policy. Power's New Yorker article on the horrors in Darfur, Sudan, won the 2005 National Magazine Award for best reporting. In 2007, Professor Power became a foreign policy columnist at Time magazine. From 1993 to 1996, she covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia as a reporter for US News and World Report, the Boston Globe, and The New Republic. She remains a working journalist, reporting from such places as Burundi, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and contributing to the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Power is the editor, with Graham Allison, of Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact. A former advisor to Senator Barack Obama, Power is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.  She moved to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine.
Professor Power is to be bestowed with a Degree of Doctor of Laws and her encomium will be delivered by Professor Caroline Fennell, Head, Department of Law, UCC.

Pat Rice
Human Rights Activist
Pat Rice is a leading human rights activist based in Argentina and working with the families of the disappeared and in the area of adult literacy. A native of Fermoy, County Cork, he has worked in Latin America since the early 1970s where he is known as a leading worker in the area of human rights and a specialist observer annually at the UN in Geneva. Pat and his wife, Fatima, are co-founders of FEDEFAM, an organisation representing the families of the disappeared in the Caribbean, Central America and Latin America.  In 1976, he was kidnapped by the Argentine military with his future wife, taken to a clandestine prison, interrogated and tortured.  His whereabouts was discovered by the Irish Embassy and he was deported from the country.  Fatima was held in detention for nearly three years during which time, she too was tortured by the military.  Pat and Fatima have worked in Buenos Aires since their return from exile in Venezuela where FEDEFAM was founded.
Mr Rice is to be bestowed with a Degree of Doctor of Laws and his encomium will be delivered by Professor Dermot Keogh, Head, Department of History, UCC.

750MMcS

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