A Waterford woman has become possibly the first Irish woman ever to be elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Kate Fitzgerald, who is originally from the Folly in the city, is an internationally renowned immunologist.
The former St Angela's student has won many awards for her pioneering research in the field of medicine, including the Science Foundation Ireland's St Patrick's Day science medal in 2015.
Her lab at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) near Boston is focused on understanding how the immune system discriminates between 'friend and foe'.
She says her research has implications for auto-immune diseases:
"It's become clear that the same pathways that help you fight infection are the pathways that go wrong in inflammatory diseases and that's really where the focus of my lab's work is now; understanding how the pathways can become disregulated, instead of responding to something dangerous they start responding to things in your own body and can give rise to auto-immune disease - where your immune system turns on its own cells and molecules."
Her research has seen her become an international leader in her field, leading to the election to the National Academy of Sciences.
The institute, which was co-founded by Abraham Lincoln, has 2,400 members including 190 Nobel laureates. 120 new members were elected last week, 59 of them female scientists. Membership is considered one of the highest honours a scientist can achieve.
Speaking to the Irish Times, Prof Luke O’Neill of TCD said:
“All of Ireland can be proud of her, and there is no justice that she is not as famous as Katie Taylor! To be elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences is a huge honour and is the life’s ambition of any scientist working in the US.”
Prof Fitzgerald worked with the TCD professor while doing her doctorate in Trinity following her undergraduate degree in UCC.
Listen to her interview with WLR News here:
Meanwhile, you can listen back to Deise Today this morning (where's Kate's full interview with WLR News Editor Julie Smyth aired) by clicking below here...
