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Roche Researcher Of The Year Awards

Conway postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Niamh O’Sullivan represented University College Dublin at the inaugural Roche Researcher Of The Year Awards, which were held in The Westbury Hotel, Dublin, on Thursday, November 26th.

The event, conceived and launched by Roche Diagnostics Ireland is designed to highlight and support excellence in life science research within the academic centres of Ireland, both in the Republic and Northern Ireland. Nominated scientists from every university in Ireland were represented at this meeting, and each individual presented their scientific paper for independent adjudication by senior academic members from the Irish research community.

Dr. O'Sullivan (pictured right) was nominated to represent UCD after winning the Conway Festival Medal at the 9th annual UCD Conway Festival of Research & Innovation for her work entitled her work “Identification of Functional Regulatory Elements in a Rat Model of Schizophrenia Using FAIRE-seq”. It was this work that she presented at the Roche Researcher of the Year event.

Professor Frank Gannon, Director-General of Science Foundation Ireland, who presented the awards on the night commented, “This awards event is essential to acknowledge the excellence and quality of ongoing research within Ireland. It also recognises the important contribution that postgraduate and postdoctoral research plays within the Irish economy. I am fully encouraged by Roche’s commitment to facilitating total solutions in biotechnology, diagnostics and pharmaceuticals through strengthening collaborative partnerships with Irish research.”

Dr. Susan Carpenter from the Biochemistry Dept., Trinity College Dublin won the competition for her work on inflammatory processes and pathogenesis within central nervous system (CNS) disorders, presented as “TRIL: A Novel Modulator of TLR4 Signalling with Enriched Expression in the Brain”.

Finbarr Kenny of Roche Diagnostics concluded, “We are delighted to be able to support life sciences research in Ireland through such an event which recognises scientific excellence. It is our aim to stage the awards annually and to widen the scope to other research centres within Ireland.”

About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche’s personalized healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2008, Roche had over 80,000 employees worldwide and invested almost 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 45.6 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan.
For more information: www.roche.com. For further details on the Roche Research Awards, please contact: Jenny.Pearson@roche.com