Kildare professor lands major research grant

A CHEMISTRY professor from Newbridge has been allocated a research grant of almost €800,000 – which was appropriately announced by his countyman Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless TD.

The Minister announced funding of €20m for 22 high-risk, high-reward research projects through the Research Ireland ‘Frontiers for the Future’ Programme, spanning antimicrobial resistance, cancer research, quantum technologies and astrophysics.

Among the projects funded, €791,010 is allocated to "GlycoMetalGuard", led by Newbridge-native Dr Joseph Byrne, a lecturer in Bioinorganic Chemistry at UCD and Fellow of the interdisciplinary Conway Institute.

Dr Byrne (37) is a former student at Patrician Secondary School and Maynooth University, and his parents Pat and Eithne still live on Moorefield Drive.

The Kildare Nationalist asked Dr Byrne where his interest in chemistry came from, and the answer it seems, wasn’t far from the apple tree.

“My dad was a chemist at Bord na Mona, while at secondary school Mr Callaghan was the chemistry teacher and he was always very encouraging,” revealed Dr Byrne.

“It was a great school, making sure their pupils were well-rounded students,” he added.

‘Frontiers for the Future’ is a legacy programme inherited from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), and has played an important role in supporting ambitious, curiosity-driven scientific research over a four- to five-year period.

The research supports 16 medium-scale projects and six larger scale.

The 25 awardees will be based in eight research bodies nationwide, while colleagues of Dr Byrne in UCD have secured more than €8m in funding, with a third of that awarded to the School of Chemistry.

And now for the science bit.

GlycoMetalGuard will develop innovative antimicrobial coatings and therapies to prevent hospital-acquired infections stemming from medical devices.

Dr Byrne’s team aims to target harmful bacteria with novel sugar-based metal compounds, supporting efforts to addressing antimicrobial resistance and improving patient safety and quality of life.

“The coatings are made of a plastic, but we’re trying to introduce metals to help extend the life of the device, and limit the possibility of further infections,” explained Dr Byrne.

“And at the moment the medical device industry in Ireland is very big,” he said, aware of the potential.

Medical device-associated infections account for up to half of healthcare-associated infections, while people who are immunocompromised, and those with cystic fibrosis (CF) are particularly at risk.