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SCIENCE FOUNDATION IRELAND ANNUAL REPORT 2015
Executive Team
Prof Mark Ferguson, Director General, SFI and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland
See full profile on page 37.
Mr Donal Keane, Chief Operations Officer
Mr Donal Keane was appointed Chief Operations Officer at SFI with effect from 1 November 2005, with responsibility for Grants, IT, Finance, HR and Facilities. Donal joined SFI from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology where he held the position of Secretary / Financial Controller from 1997 to 2005.
Prior to that Keane held senior management positions at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda, GE Capital and Wang Finance in both Dublin and Toronto, Canada. His professional training was undertaken at Coopers & Lybrand from 1978 to 1982. Donal Keane holds a B. Comm degree from University College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.
Dr Abigail Ruth Freeman, Director of Strategy and Communications
Dr Abigail Ruth Freeman was appointed as Director of Strategy and Communications in 2013. Prior to her current appointment Dr Freeman has held a series of positions at SFI. Most recently she was the Director of Programmes, Enterprise and International Affairs, with responsibility for overseeing all SFI research funding programmes and management of funded awards, as well as the Foundation’ s activities in conjunction with industry and international partners. Prior to this, Dr Freeman held roles as both Director of Enterprise and International Affairs and Head of Industry-Research Development. Dr Freeman joined SFI as a Scientific Programme Manager in November 2006.
Prior to joining SFI Dr Freeman was working as a researcher at Trinity College Dublin( TCD). She holds PhD and Bachelor degrees in Genetics from TCD. During her time there as a student she was awarded a Trinity College Dublin scholarship, the Eli Lilly Chemistry Prize and the Roberts prize for Biology. Dr Freeman’ s PhD research, on population genetics in hybrid zones, was funded by a prestigious studentship from the Wellcome Trust and was carried out at TCD and ILRI, Nairobi. She was a founding member of the Trinity Research Staff Association; the first Irish association representing contract researchers.
Dr Darrin Morrissey Director of Programmes
Dr Darrin Morrissey was appointed SFI Director of Programmes in September 2014. Darrin joined SFI from Stiefel, a GlaxoSmithKline( GSK)-owned company that develops and manufactures dermatology products. At Stiefel, he held the role of Business Improvement Director and was responsible for leading strategy deployment, change management and business transformation.
Darrin originally joined GSK in 2007 as Head of Oncology for Ireland and led the establishment of GSK’ s oncology business and the launch of its oncology and haematology therapeutics portfolio. During his time with GSK Darrin also held the role of Global Oncology Marketing Director with responsibility for developing launch strategy for melanoma therapy assets.
Prior to his time with GSK, Darrin worked across a number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies – including Sanofi-aventis, Eli Lilly & Tibotec-Virco – in a variety of commercial and clinical research roles.
Darrin qualified with a BSc in Microbiology and he holds a PhD from University College Cork. His PhD research focused on the molecular mechanisms that underlie cancer metastasis. He also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in UCC, where he conducted‘ first-in-human’ clinical trials of probiotic bacteriacontaining food products.
Darrin also holds a Diploma in Advanced Management Practice awarded by National University of Ireland Galway.