Professor Pauline Rudd

Role/Department:
NIBRT Professor of Glycan Biology at UCD

Qualifications:
BSc in Chemistry (London); LRIC, MA (Oxon), PhD (Open University)

“I moved to Ireland last year following the decision of the Glycan Sequencing Group at the Glycobiology Institute, Oxford, of which I am a member, to relocate to Dublin in August 2006. Oxford University sent a fully trained team of 11 people, with three filed patents and £600,000stg worth of equipment, including a mass spectrometer.

 “The current group consists of three post-docs, three graduate research assistants, and four graduates, but we expect this team to expand in the coming months, as the work we do requires a broad range of skills.

 “We operate as an independent research group in the newly established National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT). The Institute, which will be based at UCD, has received funding of €72m from the IDA and is currently under construction. For now, we are working as a virtual institute along with our colleagues in the three other stakeholder universities and institutes in Ireland.

 “I have two overlapping roles: to run a basic research programme at UCD and to apply the findings of the programme to the bioprocessing industry in Ireland. We have state-of-the-art technology for glycan analysis, which is very applicable to the bioprocessing industry that is making glycosylated therapies. The new generation of biological products will mostly be glycoproteins, such as erithropoetin, the pituitary hormone used in IVF treatment.

 “This is an extremely exciting area of research to be in. We’re involved in just about every field of biology because we have a useful technology and lots of experience of glycosylation.

 “We have active joint projects ongoing with a number of other researchers, such as Dr Oliver Fitzgerald, who runs a rheumatology group at St Vincents, and Dr Gavin Davey, a neurochemistry researcher at Trinity College Dublin. In addition, we plan to get involved in a number of research clusters and have made applications in this regard, so there’s lot of potential for collaboration.

 “We also offer training programmes to cater for the continuous professional development needs of researchers based in industry. Courses we run include a one-day introductory programme in Analytical Techniques in Glycobiology.

 “I would rate UCD as an excellent place in which to do research. The principal investigators are extremely good as is the whole scientific environment. Since we arrived, we’ve been given great support and people have been really helpful. We’re very happy here.”