Biology Department, NUI Maynooth
Shirley O'Dea, Principle Investigator
"The Marie Curie Grant appeared to be an ideal vehicle with which to obtain significant funding for the Department, enabling us to rapidly come up to speed on proteomics technologies as a means of identifying signaling pathways involved in lung disease processes.
The project involves a consortium of staff members with a range of expertise including lung cell biology, virology, microbiology, immunology and bioinformatics - but all with an interest in lung disease. The goal is to develop proteomics and lipidomics as platform technologies to expedite identification of the key intracellular signalling pathways involved firstly in normal lung repair processes and subsequently in three major respiratory disease processes.
World-class senior researchers with proteomics and lipidomics expertise are now being recruited through this Marie Curie TOK Grant. These researchers will establish platform technologies that will significantly enhance the research capabilities of the associated research groups within the Department in terms of expertise, techniques, resources and research outputs. In addition, the recruited researchers will be involved in teaching under-graduate and post-graduate students who will benefit greatly from the opportunity to learn about state-of-the-art technologies.
The Irish Marie Curie office at the IUA was key to our success in this scheme. In addition to initially revealing the opportunities available through Marie Curie initiatives, staff at the office had the knowledge and expertise to guide us through the layers of documentation involved. It is unlikely that we would have applied for this Grant had we not had contact with the Irish Marie Curie office, let alone actually be successful in the Marie Curie TOK scheme."
