Medicine

Contact Details

Address	Alimentary Pharmabotic Centre (Apc) Biosciences Building University College Cork Ireland
Telephone:	+353 21 490 1226
Email:	ei.ccu@nahanahs.f
Title	Professor/Head of Department
Address	Medicine Department University College Cork Cork Ireland
Telephone:	+353-21-490-3000
Fax:	+353 21 490 3000
Email:	ei.ccu@nahanahs.f
Homepage:	Web Page

Biography:

Fergus Shanahan is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University College Cork (UCC), National University of Ireland.  Born and educated in Dublin, he attended medical school at University College Dublin where he graduated with honours in 1977.  After internship and residency in internal medicine in Dublin, he did a two-year fellowship in clinical immunology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, followed by a two-year fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  Following completion of his fellowship at UCLA, he was appointed to the faculty there, rising to the rank of Associate Professor before making the decision, in 1993, to return to his native Ireland. 

Together with colleagues from several departments and different faculties within University College Cork and Teagasc (a research agency of the Irish Ministry of Food and Agriculture), Dr. Shanahan led a team of clinicians, clinician-scientists, and basic scientists to successfully compete for seed funding from the Science Foundation Ireland to create a multi-disciplinary research center, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, which investigates among other things host-microbe interactions in the gut in health and disease.  Under Dr. Shanahan’s directorship, the center now has a membership of 168 staff, scientists, and students and has expanded its funding and research base by securing research alliances with indigenous and multinational companies within the food and pharmaceutical sectors. 

Dr. Shanahan has published more than 350 papers and co-edited several books.  He is a  Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom as well as of the American College of Physicians.  He served as President of the Irish Society of Gastroenterology from 2007-2009.  He was recently named to the “Irish Life Science 50” a list of the top 50 Irish and Irish Americans in the life science industry.

His interests are in mucosal immunology, gut microbiota, inflammatory bowel disease, and most things that affect the human experience.