Professor Philip Nolan is a native of Dublin, Ireland. His childhood scientific interests ranged across astronomy, electronics, biology and medical sciences. He was the first member of his family to have the opportunity to attend university, and in choosing between science and medicine, felt he was not clever enough to be a successful scientist, and opted for the certainty of gainful employment offered by a medical degree. However, during his second medical year, he attended an open day in the Department of Physiology at University College Dublin (UCD), including a visit to the laboratory of Professor Ronan G O’Regan, where recordings were being made from carotid chemoreceptor and baroreceptor afferents. This led to his decision to complete an intercalated B.Sc. in Physiology, including a project on the effect of airway carbon dioxide on the discharge of sensory receptors in the laryngeal mucosa. Philip thus earned degrees in Physiology (1988) and Medicine (1991) at UCD. He returned to UCD to complete a PhD under the supervision of Ronan O’Regan on the role of upper airway sensory receptors in the control of breathing and the cardiovascular system during sleep.
Philip was appointed to the academic staff of the Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology at UCD in 1996, where he was fortunate to work with and be inspired by outstanding colleagues including Paul Mc Loughlin, James F X Jones and John B Moynihan. He won UCD President’s Awards for both Research and Teaching. His research interests remained in the areas of upper airway sensation and motor control, and cardiorespiratory control, in animal models and in humans, with a focus on understanding sleep apnoea, including important collaborations on signal processing and modelling with electronic engineers.
He became involved in higher education leadership from 2003, when he was appointed Director of the UCD Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research in 2003, before becoming Vice-President Academic and Deputy President at UCD in 2004. He was President of Maynooth University from 2011 to 2021, a period which saw unprecedented growth and diversification of teaching and research, and a doubling of the research capacity of the University. During 2020 and 2021, Philip was centrally involved in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, as a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team, chairing its disease modelling subgroup and synthesising scientific advice on the management of the pandemic.
He was appointed Director General of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Irelands primary funder of science and engineering research, in January 2022, and May 2023, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, appointed Philip the CEO-designate of Research Ireland, the new research funding agency to be formed by the amalgamation of SFI and the Irish Research Council. He is a strong advocate for the importance and value of fundamental curiosity-driven research across all disciplines as the foundation of a thriving research and innovation ecosystem. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and an Honorary Fellow of the Physiological Society.
