2025 PILGRIMS
PROGRAMME OF EVENTS
THURSDAY 8th MAY
Arrive in Dublin
Booked accomodation for 30-35 pilgrims and partners in the Davenport Hotel
6:15 pm AGM and Guest Speaker (Prof Owen Smith, Title: Denis Parsons Burkitt (1911-1993): Irish by Birth, Trinity by the Grace of God a Life Celebrated in Old Anatomy Theatre
8:00 pm Dinner at the Davenport Hotel
FRIDAY 9th MAY
Scientific programme (see page 4). Robert Emmet theatre, main Campus 9:15 . Speakers from TCD (see page 5-12). There will also be a social programme that day for partners which will involve medical history tour of Dublin and TCD (Prof Harbison) and visit to Book of Kells experience.
7:30 pm Dinner in the Royal Dublin Yacht Club, Dún Laoghaire
SATURDAY 10th MAY
10:00 am General interest for pilgrims and partners
1. Prof Dermot Kelleher “What is a Bicycle, What is Life?”
The Strange Intersection of Erwin Schrödinger and Flann O’Brien
2. Prof Joe Harbison ‘Kings, Queens, GIants, Mummies, and Saint Molua’
7:30 pm Formal dinner for pilgrims, partners and speakers from Friday in the Kildare Club. (After dinner speaker Prof Muiris Fitzgerald)
SUNDAY 11th MAY
SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME
SYMPOSIUM FRIDAY 9th ROBERT EMMET THEATRE, MAIN CAMPUS ARTS BLOCK
9:00 - 9:15 am Chris Conlon / Colin Doherty MD - Welcome Address
Early Morning Session - Chair Chris Conlon
9:15 - 9:45 am Joe Keane - Everything is Tuberculosis
9:50 - 10:20 am Iracema Leroi - Breaking Down Borders for Brain Health
10:25 - 10:55 am Aiden Corvin - The Enigma of the Mind: Where Psychiatry and Genomics Meet
11:00 - 11:30 am Colin Doherty - Concussion: Science and Policy
11:35 - 11:50 am Coffee
Late Morning Session - Chair Colin Doherty
11:50 - 12:20 pm Seamus Donnelly - Lung cancer is a Word Not a Sentence
12:25 - 13:00 pm Garret FitzGerald - The Aging Chronobiome
13:00 - 13:45 pm Lunch
Early Afternoon Session - Cancer
13:45 - 14:15 pm Gerry Hanna - The Evolution of Radiotherapy - Improved Precision in Targeting Cancer
14:20 - 14:50 pm Emily Harold - Lynch Syndrome: Novel Insights
14:55 - 15:25 pm Jessie Elliott - Living Beyond Cancer
Late Afternoon Session - Public Health / Aging - Chair Seamus Donnelly
15:30 - 16:00 pm Susan Smith - Treating People not Diseases
16:05 - 16:35 pm Rose Anne Kenny - Health Span vs Life Span - Lessons from a Longitudinal Study
16:40 - 17:10 pm Cliona Ni Cheallaig - Have We Moved on from the Workhouse?
Depart
17:15 - 17:30 pm Colin Doherty - Concluding Remarks
Professor Iracema Leroi is Professor in Geriatric Psychiatry, holding positions at Trinity College Dublin and the Global Brain Health Institute (www.gbhi.org). She also serves as a consultant geriatric psychiatrist at St. James’ Hospital, Dublin. Trained in Canada and the United States, including in the neuropsychiatry program at Johns Hopkins University, she previously held the role of Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manchester. During her tenure there, she founded and led the Greater Manchester Dementia Clinical Trials Programme. Currently, Professor Leroi leads the HRB-CTN Dementia Trials Ireland network and oversees a portfolio of drug and non-drug clinical trials for dementia at St. James’ Hospital. Her research focus centres on the mental health aspects of Lewy body diseases, exemplified by her leadership of the 4-year HRB-funded EMERALD Lewy program. This initiative aims to enhance the diagnosis and care of individuals with Lewy body dementia. Professor Leroi was also the Chief Investigator of the EU-wide Horizon 2020 SENSE-Cog program (www.sense-cog. eu), which involved eight nations and 37 investigators. SENSE-Cog explored the intricate links between age-related hearing, vision, and cognitive impairments, assessing the impact of sensory interventions on dementia outcomes. In her new role as Director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Professor Leroi is deeply committed to promoting equitable access to brain health care. She is an advocate for ensuring that the voices of individuals living with dementia are integral to research, policy development, and service design.
Professor Garret FitzGerald is the McNeil Professor in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he directs the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics. Previously, he chaired the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics. His work contributed fundamentally to the development of low-dose aspirin for cardio protection. FitzGerald’s group was the first to predict and then mechanistically explain the cardiovascular hazard from other NSAIDs. He has discovered many products of lipid peroxidation and established their utility as indices of oxidant stress in vivo. His laboratory was the first to discover a molecular clock in the cardiovascular system to describe bi-directional regulation of peripheral clocks with the master clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
Professor Seamas Donnelly is Professor of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and Respiratory Consultant at Tallaght University Hospital. A cell and molecular biologist he completed his research training with Chris Haslett and John Savill at Edinburgh and with Rick Bucala at Rockefeller University prior to returning to Ireland. He is a recent past President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain & Ireland (AoP), the UK’s leading medical academic organisation in the Translational Medicine space. He was recently awarded an honorary Fellowship by the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). In addition, he has recently been awarded an Honorary Professorship by the University of Edinburgh for international leadership in Translational Medicine. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine (QJM) (Impact Factor: 10.7 (2024)).
Professor Muiris X Fitzgerald is a 1964 graduate of UCD, he trained in Dublin, the Seton Hall Medical School Jersey City NJ, the University of Birmingham UK and as an International Fogarty – NIH Fellow at Boston University Medical School Thoracic Services under the aegis of Ed Gaensler, Gordon Snider and Charles Carrington. During his training in Boston he published numerous papers on Environmental and Occupational lung disease, Surgery for Bullous Lung Disease, the Evaluation of Electronic Spirometers, the effects of Marijuana on the Lung, the Natural History and Treated Course of UIP and DIP –the latter three papers were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. On returning to St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin he established its first Pulmonary Function Laboratory and initiated the first Adult and Adolescent CF service in Ireland, as well as a suite of specialist outpatient clinics for patients with sarcoidosis, lung fibrosis/rare lung diseases and asthma. He served as Secretary of the ITTS and as first Secretary of the newly formed Irish Thoracic Society in 1980, later becoming its third President. He was Chairman/ President of the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland and of the Irish Asthma Society. Prof FitzGerald is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics at University College Dublin, where he was Professor of Medicine and Consultant Physician (St Vincent’s University Hospital) from 1977 to 2006 and then Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 2000 to 2006. He is a former two-term Chairman of the Health Research Board (HRB) and served on the foundation Board of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, An Bord Altranais and Comhairle na nOispideal for four terms. In professional education, he served as Chair of the Education Committee of the Irish Medical Council for four years and was Chair of the Medical Education, Training and Research Committee (METR) of the HSE from 2006 to 2009).
Professor Gerry Hanna is the Marie Curie Chair of Clinical Oncology at Trinity College Dublin and a Consultant in Radiation Oncology at the St Lukes Radiation Oncology Network within the Trinity St James Cancer Institute. Gerry also holds honorary appointments at the University of Melbourne, and Queen’s University Belfast. His Research interests include the use of PET/CT in radiotherapy planning for lung cancer, mechanisms of radiotherapy resistance, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy and systemic therapy and immunotherapy combinations with radiotherapy. Prof Hanna is the Vice-Clinical Lead of Cancer Trials Ireland, Chief Investigator of the Peter Mac ACRF Radiation Immuno-oncology Program and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “PERTAIN” study. He is the former chief investigator and current TMG member of the CRUK funded CONCORDE study. Gerry is also a TMG member for the UK’s HALT, SARON, CONFIRM and ISOTOXIC IMRT studies and continues to provide research support to Belfast Trust.
Professor Jessie Elliott is a consultant minimally invasive and robotic upper gastrointestinal cancer surgeon and principal investigator at the Trinity St. James’s Cancer Institute. Having studied at Trinity College Dublin and completed a PhD in translational medicine, she spent time in the Netherlands and South Korea, before returning to Ireland. She has led the development of a clinical and translational research programme in oesophageal and gastric cancer survivorship at the Trinity St James’s Cancer Institute funded by the Health Research Board and the Irish Cancer Society. Current projects include the international multicentre SARONG-II RCT in upper gastrointestinal cancer surveillance and the IMPROVE study investigating the application of liquid biopsy in oesophagogastric cancer. She is an ICAT programme supervisor and has received several awards for her work including the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and American College of Surgeons International Scholarship and an American Society of Clinical Oncology Conquer Cancer Award. She his Co-Chair of the UK and Ireland Oesophagogastric Cancer Research Group, Editor of Diseases of the Esophagus journal and executive committee member within the International Society for Diseases of the Oesophagus.
