ProfessorDavid Brayden

David Brayden is Full Professor of Advanced Drug Delivery at the School of Veterinary Medicine and a Fellow of the UCD Conway Institute. Following a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, UK (1989), and a post-doctoral research fellowship at Stanford University, CA (1991), he set up Elan Corporation's pharmacology laboratory in Dublin (1991). At Elan, he became a senior scientist and project manager of several of Elan's Joint-Venture drug delivery research collaborations with US biotech companies. In 2001, he joined UCD as a college lecturer in veterinary pharmacology and was appointed Senior Lecturer (2005), Associate Professor (2006), and Full Professor (2014). He completed a successful Principle Investigator Grant from SFI on the topic of oral delivery of novel mucoadhesive polymeric peptide conjugates (2005-2009). Professor Brayden was the Director of an SFI Research Cluster grant (The Irish Drug Delivery Research Network), that was awarded 7.2 million euro by SFI from 2007-2013. He was the Deputy Coordinator of an EU 7th Framework grant on oral nanomedicines (www.TRANS-INT.eu), 2012-2017. In 2014, he was one of four Principal Investigators (Co-PIs) on the successful SFI Centre bid in Medical Devices (CURAM), worth over 40 million EUR over 6 years, which was renewed for 6 years in 2021. He is the coordinator of the Horizon Europe consortium grant, BUCCAL-PEP, which was awarded 4m EUR and runs from 2022-2026. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 research publications and patents. Professor Brayden serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Drug Discovery Today, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and the Journal of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics. In 2021 he was appointed Chief Editor of "Frontiers in Drug Delivery". He was Chairman of the UK-Ireland Chapter of the Controlled Release Society (2003-2006), Co-Chair of the Veterinary Programmes at the CRS international conferences (2003-2006), and served on the CRS Board of Scientific Advisors (2006-2009) and the CRS Annual Meeting Programme Committee (2015, 2016). At UCD, he was Chairman of the Animal Research Ethics Committee (2005-2007) and was a member of the UCD Research Ethics Committee (2006-2011) and was elected by the Academic Council to the UCD Promotions and Tenure Committee (2010-2012) and to the UCD Academic Council for Academic Centres Committee, ACCAC (2019-). He was Director of Research for the School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine (2007-2008) and Head of the Veterinary Biosciences Section from 2013-2017. On the teaching side, he coordinates undergraduate and postgraduate modules on Biological Fluids and Drug Discovery and Development and contributes to a module on Cell Communication. He contributes Professional Ethics material to the Conway Institute Core Research Skills modules and also coordinates a 4th level module on Drug Discovery and Development. In 2015, he was made an Adjunct Professor at NUI Galway to support his Co-Lead PI role in the Research Ireland CURAM Centre for Medical Devices. He was UCD's lead in the successful bid for the Research Ireland RINN Centre for Medical Devices, awarded in 2026. He was elected as a Fellow of both the Controlled Release Society (2012) and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (2017), and as a member of the Royal Irish Academy (2024). In 2021, he was appointed by the Minister of Health to the National Research Ethics Committee (Clinical Trials A) and became Chairperson of Clinical Trials Committee D in 2024. In 2026 he was awarded a DSc for published works by the National University of Ireland.  He acts as a consultant to selected Pharma and Biotech companies and is on the Science Advisory Boards of Biograil Ltd (Denmark), Arecor (UK),  and the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium (US).