CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
Plenary Speakers
• Professor Andrey Shkoporov
"The viral dark matter of the gut microbiome"
• Professor Piotr Kowalski
"Engineering messanger RNA nanotherapeutics"
• Professor Caitriona O’Driscoll
"Non-invasive delivery of RNA- medicines of the future"
• Professor Jonathan Drennan
"Magnet4Europe - Improving Health and Wellbeing in the Health Care Workplace"
• Professor Deirdre Murray
"Predicting early brain function in high risk children and why it matters"
Professor Andrey Shkoporov
Professor Andrey Shkoporov is a molecular microbiologist with special interest in the human gut phageome, microbiome, gut anaerobes, and beneficial microbes. He transitioned to a career in microbiology after obtaining a medical degree from Russian State Medical University.
He also obtained a PhD in microbiology from the same university in 2009 and worked in Russia as a post- doctoral researcher on several projects. In 2015, he joined APC as a research fellow to work on the Gut Phageomics Spoke focusing on the role of human gut phageome in IBD.
In 2020 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and an ERC Consolidator Grant to continue his research of bacteriophage communities in the human gut.
Dr Piotr Kowalski
Dr. Kowalski is an Associate Professor in advanced therapies at the School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, and a Funded Investigator at the APC Microbiome Ireland. He earned his Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) which focused on the development of lipid-based systems for tissue selective delivery of siRNA.
He received his postdoctoral training at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratories of Prof. Daniel Anderson and Prof. Robert Langer. His multidisciplinary research focused on engineering novel biomaterials to enable the delivery of messenger RNAs to treat inflammatory diseases, cancer, and diabetes.
Dr. Kowalski’s work resulted in a number of high-impact publications, several patents on RNA delivery technologies, and the creation of a US-based biotech startup (Orna therapeutics). His research at UCC is centered on developing Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products, in particular, novel clinically relevant drug delivery technologies for parental and non-parental applications, to facilitate effective nucleic acid-based therapies aimed at high medical need diseases that lack effective treatment.
Dr. Kowalski has recently won a prestigious European Research Council Starting grant to develop a new class of circular RNA therapeutics. Currently, his group investigates the therapeutic potential of RNA molecules, including short interfering RNAs, messenger RNAs, and circular RNAs to treat diseases such as sepsis, inflammatory bowel disease, and cancer by delivering these RNAs to diseased cells
Professor Jonathan Drennan holds the Chair of Nursing and Health Services Research at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork. He was previously Professor of Healthcare Research at the University of Southampton.
Professor Drennan has undertaken research in Ireland and the UK on nurse and midwife prescribing, cancer information services, research priorities for nursing and midwifery, safe nurse staffing and advanced practice.
He presented to and advised the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Safe Staffing Advisory Committees on staffing in medical and surgical wards and accident and emergency departments in the UK. This was part of the development process of the NICE guidelines on safe staffing.
Professor Drennan is currently a member of the Department of Health taskforce involved in the development of guidelines for safe nurse staffing and skill mix in the healthcare sector. He is currently leading a Health Research Board and Department of Health funded study on safe staffing in medical, surgical, emergency and older person’s settings in Ireland. Professor Drennan is also part of a European and US research team that have been awarded €4 million from the EU Horizon 2020 research programme. The title of the research, Magnet4Europe, develops and implements a theory-based organizational redesign in 60 hospitals in 5 European countries and involves one-to-one twinning between hospitals in Europe and Magnet hospitals in the US with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of healthcare staff and enhancing the working environment.
Professor Jonathan Drennan holds the Chair of Nursing and Health Services Research at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork. He was previously Professor of Healthcare Research at the University of Southampton.
Professor Drennan has undertaken research in Ireland and the UK on nurse and midwife prescribing, cancer information services, research priorities for nursing and midwifery, safe nurse staffing and advanced practice.
He presented to and advised the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Safe Staffing Advisory Committees on staffing in medical and surgical wards and accident and emergency departments in the UK. This was part of the development process of the NICE guidelines on safe staffing.
Professor Drennan is currently a member of the Department of Health taskforce involved in the development of guidelines for safe nurse staffing and skill mix in the healthcare sector. He is currently leading a Health Research Board and Department of Health funded study on safe staffing in medical, surgical, emergency and older person’s settings in Ireland. Professor Drennan is also part of a European and US research team that have been awarded €4 million from the EU Horizon 2020 research programme. The title of the research, Magnet4Europe, develops and implements a theory-based organizational redesign in 60 hospitals in 5 European countries and involves one-to-one twinning between hospitals in Europe and Magnet hospitals in the US with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of healthcare staff and enhancing the working environment.
Professor Caitriona O'Driscoll
Caitriona M. O’Driscoll is Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, Ireland. Originally a Pharmacist, she completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at Trinity College Dublin and was Senior Lecturer there until 2003.
Her research interests are translational in nature and include oral and parenteral delivery of nano-therapeutics incorporating nucleic acids, formulated using novel biomaterials. Manufacturing hurdles and new tools to efficiently assess and facilitate licencing of these innovative therapies are also of interest.
She is the coordinator of GENEGUT, entitled ‘Oral delivery of encapsulated RNA nanotherapeutics for targeted treatment of ileal Crohn's disease’, funded by the European Commission under the HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06 Programme Grant Agreement number 101057491.
Professor Deirdre Murray is a Prof of Paediatrics and Consultant Paediatrician in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Cork. Prof. Murray trained in General Paediatrics in Dublin before completing a Specialist Registrar Training and Fellowship training in Paediatric Intensive Care Medicine in the Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital, Bristol and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.
Prof Murray then returned to Ireland to take up a dedicated Research Fellowship in UCC and complete her PhD in the area of neonatal hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, supported by the Denis O’Sullivan Research Fellowship award. Prof Murray has a strong research background in newborn brain injury and developmental assessment. She is a founding member of the Neonatal Brain Research Group (www.nbrg.ucc.ie ) and a principal investigator of the INFANT (Irish Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research (www.infantcentre.ie). She is the principal investigator of the Cork BASELINE Birth Cohort Study and the BiHiVE study.
Through large international studies she has been working to develop new ways to predict new-born brain injury using continuous multi-channel EEG, blood-based biomarkers and early neurological assessment. In 2012 she was awarded a Health Research Board Clinician Scientist Award to study early blood-based biomarkers in hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy, the BiHiVE2 study (www.medscinet.net/bihive).
She is the principal investigator of the Cork BASELINE Birth Cohort study (www.baselinestudy.net) which is a collaborative birth cohort study examining early environmental influences of neurocognitive and behavioral outcome. In response to the growing evidence of long-term learning difficulties in HIE, Prof Murray is now working to develop new methods of early cognitive assessment using touchscreen technology in the Science Foundation Ireland funded Beyond BiHiVE project.
Professor Deirdre Murray is a Prof of Paediatrics and Consultant Paediatrician in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Cork. Prof. Murray trained in General Paediatrics in Dublin before completing a Specialist Registrar Training and Fellowship training in Paediatric Intensive Care Medicine in the Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital, Bristol and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.
Prof Murray then returned to Ireland to take up a dedicated Research Fellowship in UCC and complete her PhD in the area of neonatal hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, supported by the Denis O’Sullivan Research Fellowship award. Prof Murray has a strong research background in newborn brain injury and developmental assessment. She is a founding member of the Neonatal Brain Research Group (www.nbrg.ucc.ie ) and a principal investigator of the INFANT (Irish Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research (www.infantcentre.ie). She is the principal investigator of the Cork BASELINE Birth Cohort Study and the BiHiVE study.
Through large international studies she has been working to develop new ways to predict new-born brain injury using continuous multi-channel EEG, blood-based biomarkers and early neurological assessment. In 2012 she was awarded a Health Research Board Clinician Scientist Award to study early blood-based biomarkers in hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy, the BiHiVE2 study (www.medscinet.net/bihive).
She is the principal investigator of the Cork BASELINE Birth Cohort study (www.baselinestudy.net) which is a collaborative birth cohort study examining early environmental influences of neurocognitive and behavioral outcome. In response to the growing evidence of long-term learning difficulties in HIE, Prof Murray is now working to develop new methods of early cognitive assessment using touchscreen technology in the Science Foundation Ireland funded Beyond BiHiVE project.