Education
Undergraduate
As an honorary personal professor at the National University of Ireland Galway I am heavily involved in teaching Medical and Bio-engineering Students.
As well as giving regular Lectures and tutorials, I was one of the writing committee for the cardiovascular module for undergraduate education in Faculty of Medicine in NUIG.
Postgraduate
As part of my commitment to endovascular training I began our endovascular fellowship in collaboration with the National University of Ireland Galway.
This is an innovative course to train our future specialists on the practical and academic aspects of endovascular surgery and provide successful candidates with an MMSc higher degree from NUIG. The endovascular fellowship effectively combines frontline research with global education in order to significantly raise the quality of cardiovascular patient care.
I am a representative on the examiner board for the European Board of Vascular Surgery and continue to be involved as an examiner and as a member of the examination review board. I am also an examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons Basic Surgical Training Intercollegiate Examination. Furthermore, I provide didactic education sessions and simulator training seminar days for the Higher Surgical Trainees at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Public Education and Awareness
I have set-up a vascular website as an educational resource on vascular disease, available treatments and future directions for both patients and professionals.
This website provides educational videos, downloadable information pamphlets and research and educational resources and links.
AAA and Vascular Screening
I have been appointed as the clinical lead for the national pilot of AAA screening in Ireland.
We provide outreach clinics, travelling to the most remote areas of Ireland to provide Duplex ultrasound-based screening. The screening program provides quick, accurate and minimally invasive testing for abdominal aortic aneurysms. As a marker of peripheral arterial disease and cardiovascular burden we also include Ankle Brachial Indexes, Carotid Intimal-media Thickness (IMT) measurements and Femoral IMT dimensions. Risk factor and investigational findings are entered into an innovative cloud computing solution which is a web-based electronic data capture system.
Establishment of the Western Vascular Institute
As part of my commitment to treatment and awareness of vascular disease and translation research, I founded the Western Vascular Institute in 2002.
The Western Vascular Institute is a charitable body committed to vascular research, technical innovation, professional and public education. To have the infrastructure to address critical issues in cardiovascular medicine, and then to teach others, is central to the mission.
My main goal is to facilitate development of surgical, endovascular, and medical therapies in the treatment of vascular disease. Part of the role of the Western Vascular Institute is to objectively systematize and administer collaboration between vascular surgeons and partners in industry, related clinical fields and other research organizations for focused, cardiovascular-specific, patient-driven research.
Establishment of the necessary infrastructure for research and education.
Vascular science and innovation is my primary interest and for this purpose in the last eight years I have secured over €2.7million in funding from Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, IDA and industrial research grants.
Upon taking up my post in Galway, I quickly established links with various departments within the National University of Ireland in Galway that are relevant to my research. My connections with the University College Galway Main Campus and Medical School extend to interactions with core laboratories and investigators of the National Centre for Engineering and Science (NCBES) and the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) in NUIG, where vascular research fellows on my team have worked on projects as part of their MD and PhD degrees and we opened the first Vascular BioBank in 2005.