University College Dublin

Brief overview

University College Dublin is a research intensive global university ranked within the top 1% of higher education institutions worldwide. It has more than 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students drawn from 152 countries. Within the UCD School of Medicine, respiratory research is a major focus ranging from translational clinical trials through to preclinical, mechanistic investigations in in vivo and cellular models of lung diseases.

Specific areas of interest are interstitial lung diseases, pulmonary vascular diseases including pulmonary hypertension, acute lung injury/ARDS and autoimmune, allergic and inflammatory mechanisms in chronic lung diseases.

Research areas

Acute lung injury (ALI)
Immunology
Interstitial lung disease (ILD)
Lung cancer
Pulmonary hypertension

Host centre eligibility

Global fellowships (return phase only)
European fellowships

Research infrastructure/facilities

The School of Medicine Clinical Research Centre provides facilities for patient based research on the sites of our major associated teaching hospitals. These are supported by experienced clinical research scientists, data managers and clinical research nurses. Research using cell and molecular models of lung disease is undertaken in UCD Conway Institute. The UCD Conway Institute is an interdisciplinary research centre exploring mechanisms of health and disease which provides dedicated laboratory space and core facilities supported by dedicated technology experts including advanced imaging, flow cytometry, proteomics, metabalomics, genomics and RNA sequencing.

Research funding/resources

The School of Medicine research is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, H2020 Marie Sklodoska-Curie Fellowships, the Health Research Board of Ireland, the Irish Research Council, the Physiological Society, Enterprise Ireland, UCD Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and through industrial collaborations.

Links to non-academic sector

University College Dublin is committed to increasing levels of collaboration and partnership with Irish and international industry. NovaUCD is the University hub for new ventures providing a purpose-built incubation facility for knowledge-intensive companies that facilitate interactions between academic researchers and industry. It includes a network of industry experts, patent agents and legal experts to support researchers to commercially exploit their research outputs for the benefit of the University and the wider community.

The PPI Ignite Network in UCD supports Public and Patient Involvement in health research providing PPI training and workshops to UCD researchers to develop PPI activities.

Experience hosting international researchers, career development & training programmes, outreach activities

The UCD School of Medicine and the Conway Institute have a record of successfully hosting research fellows, both national and international, funded directly by research programmes and by external personal fellowship schemes including Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowships.

UCD Research Careers and Professional Development provides support for career development in four key domains: research and research management, teaching and learning, personal and professional development and innovation and transferrable skills. Previous Respiratory Postdoctoral Fellows within the School of Medicine have progressed to successful careers in academia, clinical medicine and in the biomedical industry sector.

HR Excellence in Research – EU award

Yes