Wexford Science Café's May guest will be Dr Anthony Redmond, from Wexford, who is a lecturer in UCD’s School of Medicine with a special interest in the evolutionary history of animals and their genomes.

Dr Redmond was recently awarded a prestigious University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society in London. He will lead the project, Immunity in the Fast Lane: Reconstructing the Evolution of the Animal Immune System and Prospecting for Novel Antimicrobials.

Dr Redmond’s research will uncover the origins of animal immune systems by studying unique marine invertebrates. This work has the potential to identify novel antimicrobial compounds, which could lead to new treatments in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Under the Royal Society scheme 33 candidates received University Research Fellowships across 18 UK and Irish universities. These grants provide early career researchers with funding of up to £1.83m over eight years.

Across his career Dr Redmond has focused on the origins and evolution of the immune system, with a view to improving understanding of the immune response in understudied species, but also on the wider issues of long-standing and difficult problems that prohibit resolution of the Tree of Life. Dr Redmond will discuss with us this elaborate visualisation and conceptualisation of the history of life forms.

Dr Redmond studied at St Mary’s CBS, Enniscorthy, Maynooth University (BSc) and the University of Aberdeen (PhD). He was a Research Fellow at the TCD Institute of Genetics for five years before joining UCD’s School of Medicine.

Booking is essential, please contact us on 053-9196760 or or email wexfordlibrary@wexfordcoco.ie.