Our 20th Annual Multidisciplinary Research Conference took place on Friday, the 29th of November 2019. Our Keynote Speakers for the Conference were:
Prof. Niall Moyna is professor of clinical exercise physiology at DCU. He undertook his undergraduate degree at University of Limerick, and completed his graduate studies at Purdue University and the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He completed a three-year National Institute of Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in immunology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre. He was Director of the Clinical Exercise Research Laboratory in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre and later moved to Connecticut to take a position as a Senior Research Scientist in Nuclear and Preventive Cardiology at Hartford Hospital. Prof Moyna has published over 170 research papers. His research examines the role of exercise in the prevention and treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases and on understanding how gene polymorphisms help to explain inter-individual variability in biological responses to exercise. Niall is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and the Faculty of Public Health Medicine Ireland. He is a regular contributor to TV and radio on issues related to lifestyle and health and has a keen interest in sport.
Prof. Francis Finucane is a consultant endocrinologist at Galway University Hospitals and honorary personal professor in medicine, NUIG. During higher medical training in endocrinology and general internal medicine, he was awarded an MD from Trinity College Dublin for research on the mechanistic basis for type-2 diabetes in young people. He then completed an MRC-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge, UK, where he studied the effects of structured lifestyle modification on metabolic risk in older people – the first trial to show that exercise reduces liver fat content in humans. He conceptualised and validated a novel method to quantify insulin resistance (“leptin: adiponectin ratio”) and also contributed to important discoveries about the genetics of insulin resistance. Since returning to Ireland in 2010, he has established a regional bariatric service for patients with severe and complicated obesity, and was the clinical lead for endocrinology at Galway University Hospitals and Saolta from 2014-18. He was elected to Council at RCPI in 2017 and has served on various policy groups and the examinations board, as well as representing RCPI on the board of the National Office for Clinical Audit. He is a member of several international scientific organisations and peer reviews for several high impact medical journals. He is on the editorial board of the journal Obesity Surgery. He received the inaugural Clinical research Career Development Award from Saolta this year.