Fergal J. O’Brien

Fergal O’Brien is Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation, Professor of Bioengineering & Regenerative Medicine and head of the Tissue Engineering Research Group, the 2017 Irish Research Laboratory of the Year, in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He is PI and Deputy Director of the Research Ireland-funded Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (AMBER) Centre between RCSI, TCD and over 80 industry partners. He is currently a member of the World Council of Biomechanics and past President of the Section of Bioengineering of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and has previously served as Biomaterials Topic Chair for the Orthopaedic Research Society, as an EU Council Member of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society and a member of Irish Medicines Board Advisory Committee on Medical Devices. He has patented and commercialised numerous technologies developed in his lab and has translated 2 technologies for bone and cartilage repair to the clinic. He co-chaired the World Congress of Biomechanics which was held in Dublin in 2018. Since his faculty appointment, he has published over 300 journal articles as well as numerous book chapters and editorials in peer-reviewed international journals and books, filed 20 patents/disclosures and supervised over 60 doctoral students to completion. He has presented over 100 invited talks and has a current h-index of >95. He is a recipient of four prestigious European Research Council Awards including a €3 million Advanced Grant (2018). Other accolades include a Fulbright Scholarship (2001), New Investigator Recognition Award by the Orthopaedic Research Society (2002), Science Foundation Ireland, President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (€1.1. million, 2004), Engineers Ireland Chartered Engineer of the Year (2005), Anatomical Society New Fellow of the Year (2014) and Fellowship of Engineers Ireland (2013) and the European Alliance for Medical & Biological Engineering Science (2016), the Silver Medal from the Section of Bioengineering of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (2018), membership of the Royal Irish Academy (2018), the Marshall R. Urist, MD Award from the Orthopaedic Research Society (2023) and Fellowship of Irish Academy of Engineering (2023). His research focuses on the development of natural polymer (such as collagen) biomaterial-based therapeutics for tissue engineering with target applications in bone, cartilage, cardiovascular, corneal, respiratory and neural tissues. A major focus of ongoing research has been to functionalise these scaffolds for use as delivery systems for biomolecules with a particular interest in the delivery of nucleic acids (pDNA, siRNA and microRNA) to enhance their therapeutic potential. His group also focusses on the use of these scaffolds as advanced 3D pathophysiology in vitro systems for drug development and for studying cellular crosstalk in co-cultures and understanding disease states in cancer, angiogenesis, immunology and infection. In addition, he has a major interest in studying the response of living cells to mechanical stimuli (mechanobiology) and using biophysical stimuli (applied by bioreactors or controlled by biomaterial biophysical cues) to regulate stem cell differentiation. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CFBzniwAAAAJ https://ca.linkedin.com/in/fergal-o-brien-9b065a1 https://www.rcsi.com/people/profile/fjobrien