University College Dublin, Co-ordinator

Prof. Kenneth A. Dawson is the Chair of Physical Chemistry at University College Dublin, a Director of the Complexity Centre in La Sapienza, and currently President of the European Colloid and Interface Society. He is an Editor of Current Opinion in Colloid Science, and recently become Senior Editor of Physica. He has co-ordinated several EU actions successfully, currently a Marie Curie Network containing 16 EU and US universities working with the dynamics of meso- and nano-particles in dense media. He is the winner of the Packard Fellowship, IBM prize, Dreyfus and Sloan Awards, and several international Professorships.His personal research interests involve both dense particles systems, and their connections to novel materials, from nanoparticles for gene transfer, protein gellation and other dynamically slowed systems. He has helped frame the study of how such materials interact with living cells. He has lead interdisciplinary teams of physicists, chemists, biologists in the past, including the development (mainly by biologists) of a core teaching tool ‘The Dynamic Cell’ now in use in several hundred Universities in US and Europe.

Prof. Stephen Pennington is Director of the newly established state-of-the-art Proteomics Centre at the Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, UCD.

Prof. Catherine Godson is Vice-President for Innovation and Corporate Partnerships at UCD, and is a senior Biological Scientist in the University. She researches mammalian cell signal transduction with particular emphasis on inflammation and its resolution and the microvascular complications of diabetes.

Dr. Seamas Donnelly’s research group have been at the forefront of delineating key regulatory pathways which predispose towards aberrant remodelling and repair, and translating these important observations to human granulomatous and non-granulomatous diseases. They have one of the largest European biorepositories of patient samples with primary cells and lung lavage fluid from granulomous tissue.

Prof. Dolores Cahill is one of the worlds leading experts on antibody arrays, technology, and scientifically driven studies using this approach.

Prof. Gerald Byrne is Dean of Engineering at UCD, and has extensive experience with production of mechanical wear particulates.

Dr. Iseult Lynch (SSO) has extensive experience with the synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles and materials for use in biological applications (where cells are sensitive to even nanomolar traces of impurities) and has the necessary technical and organizational skills to ensure that the particle streams into the project are controlled and purified to the highest standards.