Dr. Katie Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, University College Cork where she contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes. She is a qualified pharmacist (BSc. Pharm, Trinity College Dublin) and completed her PhD in Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, TCD, in area of novel excipients for topical drug delivery. During this time, she also completed a postgraduate diploma in Quality Improvement (Trinity College Dublin). She subsequently completed a master’s in Teaching and Learning in University College Cork focusing on teaching strategies to enhance critical thinking development in pharmacy students. She is also interested in promoting science and supporting young researchers. She is a member and past president of the United Kingdom and Ireland Controlled Release Society (2017-2020). She has received funding from SFI, Enterprise Ireland and Industry to support her research. She is a funded researcher in the SFI funded SSPC - Synthesis and Solid-State Pharmaceutical Research Centre. She has attracted > €1.2 million as PI, co-PI and through consultancy activities.

Katie’s research interests focus on the formulation and processing of both novel and challenging therapeutic cargoes including proteins and poorly soluble drugs to create stable and efficacious products for drug delivery, medical device, and tissue regeneration applications. In 2013 and 2014, she undertook sabbatical research in Prof. David Mooney’s Bioengineering lab in Harvard University investigating novel biomaterial strategies to promote bone tissue regeneration. This research has grown to utilise biomaterials to create more clinically relevant in vitro models to provide more accurate and informative screening of drug cargoes. Katie is interested in projects with a translational focus and has been involved in several academic-industry collaborative projects in the areas of novel formulation design and combination medical devices for pulmonary and orthopaedic applications. She is a funded researcher in the SFI funded SSPC - Synthesis and Solid-State Pharmaceutical Research Centre.

I am interested in teaching and learning methods that help foster and develop students' higher order and critical thinking skills. I currently teach both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the areas of formulation science, novel drug delivery systems. I also work together with School of Pharmacy colleagues to delivery cross-disciplinary, integrate modules to our undergraduate pharmacy students.