UCD Conway Institute celebrates a decade of research excellence


To date, there have been over 700 PhD graduates, and 350 postdoctoral researchers have been educated and trained to exacting international standards at the UCD Conway Institute.

These highly skilled individuals have taken up employment in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and ICT industries, as well as in public agencies and academia in Ireland and internationally.

The UCD Conway Institute’s research portfolio includes 3,275 peer-reviewed research publications with the top 1pc published in the most prestigious scientific journals.

Also, UCD Conway Institute researchers currently have successful collaborations, leading to publications, with scientists from over 1,500 organisations in 70 countries.

Professor Des Higgins, UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science and a UCD Conway Institute fellow, recently broke the barrier of 100,000 total citations for his work on DNA sequence comparisons. This total makes him the most highly cited Irish scientist in the past decade and one of the most highly cited scientists and researchers worldwide.

“We know our software and methods are widely used in molecular biology laboratories around the world and counting citations is one way we can prove it,” he said.

“This maintains the high visibility of our laboratory and the institute and helps us reach a broad audience when we publish new methods.”

In 2003, the UCD Conway Institute was established to bring together chemists, biologists, computer scientists and clinicians to work together in multidisciplinary research teams. Research conducted in the UCD Conway Institute is focused on deciphering the underlying pathways that cause disease with the aim of developing the next generation of diagnostics, prognostics, and therapeutics.