Des Fitzgerald has 30 years experience as a clinician scientist and academic leader, in the US and in Ireland, in both public and private institutions. Following his graduation from medical school at University College Dublin, he moved to the US to train in clinical pharmacology and cardiology at Vanderbilt University, where he remained to head a coronary care unit and cardiac research programme. n
 1994, he was appointed
 Chair
 of
 Clinical
 Pharmacology at the
 Royal
 College
 of
 Surgeons
 in
 Ireland. Over the next 10 years, he developed the RCSI
 Clinical
 Research Centre, the Institute for Biopharmaceutical Sciences and the Centre for Human Proteomics. Since 1994, he has been Professor of Molecular Medicine and Vice President for Research in UCD. He led the development of the Charles Institute for Dermatology Research, Systems Biology Ireland and the National Institute forBioprocessing Research and Training, amongst other multidisciplinary programmes. He also led the development of the UCD Science Centre, a €300m facility for interdisciplinary research. At the heart of the centre is a major investment in data analytics, computational science and systems biology. More recently, he established the UCD Applied Research Centre, a joint initiative with the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, to develop programmes in human sciences and survey methodology.He has held several positions in public bodies, including Chairmanship of the Health Research Board. He is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, and an elected member of the Association of American Physicians. His research focuses on proteomics in cardiovascular disease and translational medicine.