INTERvIEW | Provost
A Global Vision
Louise Holden speaks to DR PATRICK PRENDERGAST, the 44th Provost of Trinity College.
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n the day of this interview, Paddy Prendergast was on his way to meet the Queen. As the incoming Provost of Trinity College, welcoming the British monarch to the University was one of his early duties and a neat exemplar of the unique role of Trinity College in Irish public life. Telling the story of Trinity College will be a key function of his Provostship, says Prendergast. Just as the Dublin campus is an unmissable leg of any Dublin tour, the Trinity story travels well, around the country and around the globe. Born and raised in Oulart, a small Wexford village known only to hurling enthusiasts, Paddy Prendergast left for Trinity College and a bachelor’s programme in engineering aged 17. He found the place inspiring from the moment he walked through Front Arch. “The physical environment of the place interacts with the intellectual environment and motivates people,” he says. “The vista from the front arch is a metaphor for what a university should do for the mind.” Prendergast remained at Trinity to complete a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, focusing his research on orthopaedic devices for the medical technology sector. Working with surgeons, he fine-honed implant design for joint replacements – an activity which continues today at Trinity, which is at the cutting edge of global research in this field. At the time, however, research was a new phenomenon in Ireland. “It was the 1980s and we were operating on a
economic skins in the long term. “This sector is still doing well and expanding. The strength built into the Irish economy in the 1990s is still with us and will form the basis of our recovery.” After completing his Ph.D., Prendergast went to Europe where, he claims, he really learned what can be done with a world-class research infrastructure. He completed his post doctorate at the Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli at the Italian National Centre for Orthopaedic Research, building robotic surgeons and learning Italian. Then he went on to the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands and there he learned how to publish, how to win research grants and “how to be an international scientist in the modern world.” “When I came back to Trinity as a lecturer in 1995, I felt I was ready for Ireland’s research expansion,” he says. “I put a consortium of researchers from Italy and the Netherlands together and we were granted IR£350,000. It was a very substantial sum at the time. We hired post-docs and researchers and ran the biggest university engineering laboratory in the country.” Activities at the lab centred on developing methods for the pre-clinical testing of implants, using powerful new computer technology to simulate the clinical environment. The lab put Trinity right at the forefront of next generation medical device research – a position which it still holds today. Prendergast’s research history sets him apart from previous Provosts, who cut their academic teeth in the US. He is, by his own admission, a Europhile and believes this focus will flavour his leadership of the University. He has taken frequent sabbatical trips to European universities, spreading the message of Trinity’s work in Poland, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. He intends to build on this communication strategy throughout his term as Provost, although his frequent visits to European universities will be curtailed.
The vista from the front arch is a metaphor for what a university should do for the mind.” shoestring,” says Prendergast. “We had very little resources but we were motivated by a desire to improve the outcome for those with hip prostheses. It was such a common operation, second only to the appendectomy, but the implants often failed before ten years in those days. Now they can last a lifetime in some cases. We were working at the beginning of a medical device revolution in Ireland.” It was not just the start of our boom in medical technology. It was the early days of foreign direct investment in Ireland and the birth of the real Celtic Tiger. As far as Prendergast is concerned, the progress made in that period although eclipsed by the property boom of the noughties, will save our 12 | Trinity Today
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