Trinity appoints engineer as Provost Print this article

Patrick Prendergast Chartered Engineer, FIEI, became the 44th Provost of Trinity College Dublin earlier this year. He is the first engineer to be appointed to this post, and he joins two other engineers in similar roles: Professor James Brown Chartered Engineer, FIEI, at NUI Galway and Professor Sir Peter Gregson Chartered Engineer, FIEI, of Queen’s University Belfast

Paddy took up office as the 44th Provost of Trinity College Dublin on August 1, having been elected to the 10-year post on April 2 by the academic staff and students. Paddy, from Oulart in County Wexford, first came to Trinity in 1983 graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering and later got a PhD in bioengineering, which he carried out under the supervision of Professor David Taylor Chartered Engineer.

The first year of the work, from 1987-1988, was done at Eolas in Glasnevin (now Enterprise Ireland) on finite element analysis of artificial hip joints. He then obtained a Council of Europe scholarship to do a postdoctoral year in the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute in Bologna and, after that, he obtained a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

In these positions, he carried out research on orthopaedic implants. The work in Nijmegen won the Perren Award of the European Society of Biomechanics. Paddy and his then supervisor, Rik Huiskes, developed a method to predict what kind of mechanical stimulation (stretch, fluid flow, etc) promotes the differentiation of stem cells along different lineages.

Most highly referenced mechanical engineer
Paddy returned to Ireland as a lecturer in Trinity in 1995, and was elected a Fellow of the College in 1998. Together with colleagues in engineering, dentistry, medicine and physiology, he established the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering in 2002. He was elected MRIA in 2008 and was awarded an ScD in 2009. He is a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering.

Over this period, he wrote more than 150 papers with a current citation of almost 3,000 and a h-index of 34 (Scopus data), making him the most highly referenced mechanical engineer in the country. During this time, he worked on a range of implants: hip, shoulder, middle ear, cardiovascular stents and most recently, extensive work on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

He was awarded the Parsons Medal by the Royal Irish Academy, The Haughton Medal by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, and he gave the Wartenweiller Lecture of the International Society of Biomechanics in 2009. He served as the dean of graduate studies between 2004-2007 and was the first appointment to the expanded position of vice-provost as chief academic officer in 2008.

His research is in the area of medical device technologies, where he has carried out significant industrial collaboration in implant design and development, including as a board member of Clearstream Technologies Group plc.