Desmond Fitzgerald (professor)

Early Life

Fitzgerald was born on October 30th, 1953 to Maureen O’Donovan from Limerick and Thomas Joseph Fitzgerald from Belfast.

Education

Fitzgerald attended Oatlands College, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. He studied medicine at University College Dublin (UCD), National University of Ireland and graduated with a MB, BAO, BCH (Honours), in 1977, and a Diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Trinity College Dublin in 1982. He was awarded an MD from the National University of Ireland in 1994.

Early Career

Following his graduation from medical school at UCD and medical residency in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street Hospital and the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, Desmond completed a Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. In 1983, he moved to Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the US to train in clinical pharmacology and cardiology. He remained
 in
 the
 US
 to
 head
 a
 large
 coronary
 care
 facility
 and
 a research programme into the causes of cardiovascular disease.

Clinical appointments

In 
1991, Fitzgerald returned to University College Dublin and shortly after this he established a research laboratory and held attending physician positions at several Dublin hospitals.

In
 1994, he was appointed
 Professor
 and
 Head
 of
 Department
 of
 Clinical
 Pharmacology at the
 Royal
 College
 of
 Surgeons
 in
 Ireland.

Research interests

Over the next 10 years, he built a research programme that bridged basic research and the clinical sciences. These included the RCSI
 Clinical
 Research Centre; the Institute for Biopharmaceutical Sciences;
 SurGen, a
 pharmacogenomics
 company; the RCSI Centre for Human Proteomics; Java Clinical Research, a spin-out CRO; the RCSI biobanking facility; and a bioinformatics programme that in partnership with Siemens designed the innovative ‘proteomics pipeline’.

He led the development of the College’s translational medicine research programme, which culminated in the Programme for Human Genomics, a €42m research partnership between the three medical schools in Dublin that has since grown into the national programme for translational medicine (Molecular Medicine Ireland). From 2002, he was appointed as Director of Research and a member of the senior management team at RCSI.

University College Dublin

In 2004, Fitzgerald was appointed Vice President for Research and Professor of Molecular Medicine in UCD. Fitzgerald developed the research strategy and oversaw its implementation through a new organisation, UCD Research. In five years, the university soared in global rankings to enter the top 100, trebled its research funding and increased its rate of academic publication by 250%.

Central to the research strategy in UCD has been the development of a series of multi-disciplinary programmes with a strong translational focus. These have included six research institutes spanning humanities, social sciences, engineering, science and business; two Centres for Science Engineering and Technology; and seven Strategic Research Clusters. He developed a series of programmes in the humanities targeting major societal challenges in areas that included education and child development.

Fitzgerald established 7 structured PhD programmes and a Researcher Career Framework and led the strategic recruitment of a large group of academics (the Stokes Lectureships and Professorships).

Fitzgerald was criticised for his high salary on joining UCD from RCSI. In reality, his package was in all likelihood less than at RCSI. UCD consistently defended the salary on the basis that he achieved a major turnaround in research funding, amounting to €1bn during his watch.

UCD - Science District

Fitzgerald led the development of the UCD Science Centre, a €300m development that was funded through philanthropy and successive bids to the national investment fund in higher education, the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions.

Phase I opened in September 2011, with Phase II completed in September 2013, and as of October 2016, Phase III is in the planning stage. From the outset, it was envisaged that computational science and informatics would be central to the development. This ambition has been realized with an €80m national data analytics centre award to UCD and its partners in 2013.

The UCD Science District includes several major programmes, include The Earth Institute and INSIGHT, the national data analytics programme. It is also home to Ireland’s largest and most comprehensive campus for education and research in the Health Sciences, spanning biomedical research, population science and health services research.

Fitzgerald also developed a science outreach programme, including the UCD Imagine Science Film Festival and Science Expression.

Biomedical and Health Research

During his tenure at UCD, Fitzgerald has played a central role in the development of biomedical and health research, and building links to the hospital campuses. Central to these efforts has been the UCD Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, opened in 2002, a 13,000 sq m facility that is home to 400+ biomedical researchers. Several state-of-the-art technology platforms have been developed in the Institute to support the biomedical community, including comprehensive proteomics facilities, gene sequencing and bioinformatics. Based on these capabilities, the Institute was well positioned in 2009 to establish the €20m national programme in Systems Biology funded by Science Foundation Ireland.

Allied to the UCD Conway Institute are facilities for translational medicine, with the core goal of improving patient care. The facilities include the Clinical Research Centres on the hospital campuses and the €18m Charles Institute for dermatology research and training. Extensive resources have been built for drug development. These include the €50m Centre for Molecular Innovation and Drug Discovery and the €58m National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training.

Other facilities include the Centre for Nanomedicine, which is developing technologies for stem cell therapy, drug delivery and human imaging. Strong links have been forged in nutrition between the biomedical programme and food science through the UCD Institute of Food and Health, which opened in 2011. Several programs were initiated to develop novel technologies for healthcare. These include Technology Research for Independent Living, a unique partnership with Intel and GE Healthcare that is developing health technologies for deployment in the home and the Enterprise Ireland-funded centre, Applied Research for Connected Health.

Vice-President for Health Affairs, UCD and Chief Academic Officer of the Ireland East Hospital Group

After 2013, Fitzgerald was appointed Principal of the College of Health Sciences, Vice-President for Health Affairs at UCD, and Chief Academic Officer of the Ireland East Hospital Group to drive the development of health sciences at UCD and their integration with the affiliated hospitals. The initiative is central to the development of the emerging Academic Health Sciences Centre, a partnership between UCD and 11 hospitals, including two major teaching hospitals, the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and St. Vincent’s University Hospital.

Board membership

Fitzgerald has also worked on the Boards of medical charities and national agencies. As Chairman of the health-funding agency, the Health Research Board, his key achievement was securing €50m exchequer funding for national clinical research centers attached to medical schools. To date, three clinical research centres have been completed, in addition to the centre at RCSI, which he developed in 2002.

Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Industry Engagement

Fitzgerald developed extensive partnerships with industry centered on UCD’s key research themes. These industry partnerships are pivotal to two Centres for Science Engineering and Technology and the seven Strategic Research Clusters on campus and involve upwards of 350 companies.

In addition, UCD was awarded three industry-led Enterprise Ireland Technology Centres, including Food Health Ireland, Applied Research for Connected Health and the Centre for Advanced Research in Data Analytics.

Fitzgerald also developed the Knowledge Centre within the new UCD Science District to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. The Knowledge Centre is home to the Innovation Academy, which was established in 2011 to provide a unique programme in innovation and entrepreneurship to PhD students, and was extended to the Irish government’s Springboard initiative.

Other works

Fitzgerald established the Office for EU Research to drive the university’s efforts in Europe and led an International Strategic Collaboration Award to develop collaborative research in China, building on UCD’s educational programs in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Personal research

Fitzgerald has published over 200 papers in cardiovascular research. His current research is in atherothrombosis. He has established several companies, including SurGen, which developed pharmacogenetics in support of clinical trials and Java Clinical Research Ltd., a company that develops technologies for the clinical investigation of drugs.

Personal life

Desmond Fitzgerald is married to Margaret Fitzgerald, and they have two daughters.