Professor O’Donnell is a Consultant Haematologist in the National Coagulation Centre, St James’ Hospital, Dublin and the Professor of Vascular Biology, RCSI. He is the George Gabriel Stokes Professor of Haematology in Trinity College Dublin and Director of Irish Centre for Vascular Biology, RCSI.
Prof. O’Donnell received his medical degree from Trinity College Dublin in 1990. After internship and medical residency in Australia, he completed clinical haematology training in the Hammersmith and Royal Free Hospitals in London. In 1998, he obtained a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship, and was awarded his PhD by Imperial College London in 2001. He subsequently completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Hammersmith Hospital, and was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Imperial College in 2004. He is a Fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and the Royal College of Pathologists (UK). Following his return to Ireland in 2005, he became the first clinician scientist to receive the prestigious Science Foundation Ireland President of Ireland Young Investigator award. He is currently Professor of Vascular Biology in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Director of the Irish Centre for Vascular Biology. The Haemostasis Research laboratory led by Prof. O’Donnell has been awarded more than £12 million in peer-reviewed grant funding since 2006. His research programme in Ireland has been funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board (HRB), the Irish Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the National Children’s Research Centre (NCRC). Prof O’Donnell’s laboratory has focused on basic research related to different aspects of vascular biology in relation to clinical bleeding and thrombosis. He has published more than 120 publications in high-impact peer reviewed journals. On the basis of this research, he has also been invited to give numerous lectures at the most prestigious national and international haematology meetings, including the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, the Gordon Conference in Hemostasis and the Congress of the International Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis.