Professor Luke O'Neill

Luke O'Neill, a professor of molecular immunology and head of the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, where he leads a research team investigating the molecular basis of inflammation, a particular focus being on Toll-like receptors, innate immunity and NF-κB. His interest on inflammation began to develop during his doctoral studies in Pharmacology, which he obtained in 1988 at the Royal College of Surgeons in England. Later, he joined Strangeways Research Laboratories, Cambridge, where he was an MRC post-doctoral fellow, working on IL-1 signal transduction. In 1991 he was appointed as lecturer in biochemistry at Trinity College, Dublin. He became a Fellow in 1997 and associate professor in 1999. He has won several awards including the International Cytokine Society Young Investigator Award, Royal Irish Academy Medal for Biochemistry and the Irish Society for Immunology Medal. He has been a visiting professor in the Universities of Monash (Australia) and Gothenburg and also at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Boston. He was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2005 and as a member of EMBO in 2006. He sits on several editorial boards, notably as section editor for the Journal of Immunology and as associate editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.