Welcoming their arrival, Professor Jane Grimson, HRB Board Chairperson, said,

‘Both new members bring a rich array of skills, experiences and competencies with them. We very much look forward to the contributions that they will make to the work of the Board in the coming years.

‘I would also like to express my, and the rest of the HRB Board’s, thanks, for the work, insight and intelligence that the two outgoing Board members, Dr Barry Cullen and Professor William Molloy, have brought over the last five years. We wish them well in their future endeavours’.

Short biographical notes for Professor Donnelly, and Ms Cunningham are available below.

Dr Tracy Cunningham is the Clinical Head of Late Projects, Oncology R&D in AstraZeneca with responsibility for the clinical development of several new medicines. This involves leading the strategy, trial design and implementation of the clinical program as well as all interactions with regulatory agencies including the European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration.

A 1988 graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, she specialised in pharmaceutical medicine. She has worked at a senior level in Ireland, at a European level and for the last 10 years at a global level in multinational pharmaceutical companies (including Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis) who invest into their respective pipeline of medicines.

She lectures on the Trinity College, Diploma of Pharmaceutical Medicine course on the topic of clinical research. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Haematology.

Professor Seamas Donnelly is Professor of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. He is an international leader in Translational Medicine and his research epitomises classical bench to bedside on an international stage. The work of his research group creates clinical, genetic, biological and sensor datasets which when interrogated defines novel regulatory pathways for disease pathogenesis.

A medical graduate of University College Galway (UCG) he undertook his postgraduate training at the University Of Edinburgh and undertook a Wellcome Trust Advanced Fellowship in New York. He leads the Respiratory Professorial Centre at Tallaght University Hospital  which is a national referral centre for chronic respiratory diseases. He currently is Director of Global Relations for the School of Medicine and Trinity lead for the Health Innovation Hub Ireland.