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.

Dr. Giuliano Elia is Director of the UCD Mass Spectrometry Resource has developed mass spectroscopy approaches to identify and quantify membrane proteins, and is working on approaches to fingerprint the effect of nanoparticles on cellular protein expression.

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.