Professor Keelin O’Donoghue

Professor Keelin O’Donoghue is a medical graduate of University College Dublin and PhD Scholar of Imperial College London. She is an RCOG-trained Subspecialist in Maternal and Fetal Medicine, a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Keelin has been Consultant Obstetrician/Senior Lecturer at CUMH and University College Cork since 2007 and was awarded promotion to Professor in UCC in 2020. Keelin is national specialty-training director for the RCPI’s higher specialist training scheme in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She leads implementation for the HSE’s National Standards for Bereavement Care following Pregnancy Loss and Perinatal Death. She is now Clinical Lead for Guideline Development in Maternity and Gynaecology at the National Women and Infants Health Programme, HSE. At UCC, Keelin leads the award-winning Pregnancy Loss Research Group, combining supervising a large group of postgraduate and Doctoral students with collaborative clinical research. Current funding includes awards from Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Research Council and the Health Research Board. Keelin’s work has resulted in >200 peer-reviewed original papers and >350 published conference proceedings.

Professor Subrata Gosh

Professor Subrata Gosh is the Chair and Head of Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and Health at UCC since March 2021. He is also Deputy Director of the APC Microbiome Ireland. Subrata did his doctoral research on the immunology of IBD at University of Edinburgh where he was appointed as faculty. Between 2002 and 2008 he was Prof and Chair of Gastroenterology at Imperial College London and from 2009 to 2016 he was Prof and Chairman of Medicine, University of Calgary, and Head of Medicine, Alberta Health Services, Canada. His research interests are precision medicine in IBD, innovative clinical trials, immune cell plasticity, targeted immunotherapies in IBD, interaction of nutrients, microbes and immune system, gut inflammation and nutrition, innate immunity and epidemiology and health care in IBD. He has published over 500 peer reviewed scientific articles and several books and has an h-index of 98 (Google).

Dr Pauline Frizelle

Dr Pauline Frizelle is a senior lecturer at University College Cork and a former speech and language therapy manager, with over 20 years’ experience working with children with a wide range of speech, language and communication needs. In 2008 she was the first speech and language therapist in Ireland to be awarded the HRB fellowship for the therapeutic professions. In 2015 she was awarded an ASSISTid Marie Curie Fellowship to begin the development of an electronic assessment of complex syntax at the University of Oxford. She has since built on this work through a HRB lead investigator award, comparing assessment methodologies and developing a robust and engaging assessment of complex syntax. Pauline is particularly interested in collaborative research projects with clinicians in the community and in the development of new, robust, theoretically- driven interventions, for children from areas of social disadvantage. She has recently received a 1.2 million Definitive Intervention Feasibility award (DIFA), to complete a full definitive trial on the Happy Talk programme. Pauline’s current programme of research includes the 1) impact of dosage on intervention effectiveness for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) 2) optimal use of technology when assessing children with DLD 3) the development and implementation of interventions for children with Down syndrome 4) optimal use of key word signing in schools and 5) developing consensus on reporting guidelines to be used in language intervention studies, for children with or at risk for (D)LD.

Professor Eugene Dempsey

Professor Eugene Dempsey is a UCC graduate, he completed postgraduate training in Paediatrics in Ireland and later a Neonatal Fellowship at McGill University Health Centre, Montreal. He is the inaugural Horgan Chair in Neonatology at University College Cork, a consultant Neonatologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital and is clinical neonatal lead at the INFANT Research Centre.  He is a member of several international collaborations conducting randomised trials on different aspects of neonatal care (Premod 2, Safeboosc3 and COSGOD trials). He leads a number of local clinical studies, supervising PhD students and junior doctors on many aspects of newborn medicine including cardiovascular support and the newborn microbiome.  He is a member of several international organisations including the European Society of Paediatric Research, European Neonatal Echo Working group, European NIRS Working group and Pharmacology section of the European Society for Paediatric Research.  He has been awarded a number of Higher Degrees, including a doctorate for work on Hypotension in the preterm infant, an MSc in Health Care Ethics and Law and an MA in Teaching and Learning, focused on Simulation based procedural care. He has > 200 publications in newborn care.

Professor Caitriona O’Driscoll

Caitriona M. O’Driscoll  is Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, Ireland. Originally a Pharmacist, Caitriona has over 30 years’ experience as a drug delivery scientist. Her research is focused on the design and delivery of RNA therapeutics for chronic conditions including Crohn’s disease, prostate cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. 

Targeted delivery to diseased sites is achieved by a non-viral approach using novel biomaterials including modified cyclodextrins. Caitriona is the Director of the UCC Future Medicines research initiative.

She is coordinator of Genegut, a Horizon Europe funded project entitled Oral delivery of encapsulated RNA nanotherapeutics for targeted treatment of ileal Crohn's disease, which has 9 partners from 8 different countries.