About

What is UCD TOPMed10?

UCD TOPMed10, Marie Sklodowska-Curie COFUND Action, is a new International Training and Career Development Fellowship Programme at University College Dublin (UCD).

The Programme offers 10 prestigious Personalised Medicine Fellowships to experienced researchers.

All Fellowships are based in UCD with an optional secondment at a partner organisation in academia or industry.

Training the next generation of leaders in Personalised Medicine

With an emphasis on interdisciplinary training and career support, TOPMed10 aims to serve as a blueprint for what biomedical training can look like in the future.

Academic Outputs

As of September 2019, individual fellows have:

• Published 8 papers in high impact journals (e.g., The Journal of Physiology, Front. Cell Dev. Biol., and Molecular Cell (Impact Factor 14.5)).
• Presented their research across 28 posters and 18 oral presentations at events including IACR Annual Meeting 2019 in Belfast, SVHG Translational Medicine Symposium 2019 in Dublin, the 2018 European College of Sports Science Congress in Dublin, UKICRS Symposium 2018 in Belfast, the Proteomics and Bioinformatics Workshop at Wellcome Trust Genome Campus Hinxton UK, Experimental Biology 2017 Conference in Chicago, UCD Conway Festival of Research and Innovation in Dublin, Pharmacology 2017 in London, and 2017 Irish Association of Pharmacologists in Dublin.
• Completed 35 training initiatives such as grant writing, advanced statistics, leadership and PPI. TOPMed10 training was formally evaluated in the 2018 programme review.

Awards

The fellows have received 12 competitive awards over the past three years. Dr. Caoileann Murphy received two prestigious awards in the nutrition field in 2018; The British Nutrition Foundation’s Drummond Early Career Scientist Award, and the INDI Research Dietician of the Year Award. Dr. Ariane Watson was the gold medal winner at the Conway Institute Festival in 2018. Dr. Husvinee Sundaramurthi has won several awards including numerous travel grants and seed funding.

The fellows have also been successful in securing their own funding, where Dr. Dina Danso-Abeam was awarded a Grant from the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (€40,000). Dr. Murphy also secured a Fellowship from the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN; ~€27,000) and a UCD Career Development Award (€9,000); these funds were used to incorporate additional measures in her TOPMed10 project, including MRI scans. A full list of awards is available in Appendix I.