Professor Bill Powderly, M.D., is Head of the School, UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin.  He is Dean of Medicine and Chair, Medicine Degrees Programme Board.  Professor Powderly is also Chief Academic Officer, Dublin Academic Medical Centre, a member of the College of Health Science Executive and is a member of the University Senior Management Team.

Prof Powderly received his MB, BCh, BAO from UCD in 1979 and his MD in 1987.  He undertook his basic medical and higher specialist training in Ireland and in the United States where he established himself as a distinguished academic clinician.  Until July 2004, he was Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA where he was chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases. 

He returned to Ireland in July 2004 and was appointed as a consultant in infectious disease medicine and the UCD Professor of Medicine & Therapeutics at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.  He was appointed Head of School at the UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science in 2005 and was re-appointed to this role in 2010.  In 2008, he was appointed as the inaugural Chief Academic Officer at Dublin Academic Medical Centre, Ireland’s first academic-led health centre.

Prof. Powderly has been actively involved in HIV-related clinical research for the last twenty years and while in the USA held many leadership roles in the US Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group, including Vice-Chair of the Group and chair of its Scientific Steering Committee.  He was a member of numerous Advisory groups for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA.  He was also the first Chairman of the HIV Medicine Association in the USA.

His own research originally focused on infections, especially fungal infections, in patients with AIDS and cancer.  More recently, he and his group have concentrated on the emerging toxicities of treatment of HIV, especially the metabolic complications seen in patients receiving effective therapy, including the development of diabetes, lipid abnormalities, and bone disease.

Prof. Powderly is widely published in the areas of HIV and AIDS with over 300 original articles or book chapters.  Together with Prof. Jonathan Cohen, Dean of the School of Medicine at Brighton and Sussex in the UK, he has edited a major international textbook in Infectious Diseases.  He is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.   He is a Council Member at the Medical Council of Ireland where he chairs the Professional Development Committee.