Dr Karen English, Department of Biology

Dr Karen English won the Early-Career Researcher of the Year Award of the Irish Research Council (IRC). Dr English was presented with the IRC Award in recognition of her research on developing ‘calming’ cells in therapies for inflammatory conditions such as asthma, and for immune system disorders, such as organ transplant rejection.

Dr Karen English is an alumna of Maynooth having graduated three times from this university with BSc, MSc and then PhD in 2008.

She subsequently was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to carry out her postdoctoral training at the University of Oxford (2009-2011) before returning to Maynooth University, first as a Health Research Board Translational Medicine Research Fellow and later as a Science Foundation Ireland Starting Investigator.

She was appointed as a Lecturer in the Biology Department in 2015, and in 2018 is one of just 36 academics in Ireland, across all fields of research, to be awarded an Irish Research Council Laureate Award to progress her work.

Dr English is a Principal Investigator at Maynooth University’s Department of Biology and head of the Cellular Immunology Lab.