Fiona McCartney

Fiona is a Research Scientist in the Centre for BioNano Interactions working on the SFI funded, Bio-inspired particle architecture delivery technologies (Bio-PADT) project. Fiona completed her undergraduate studies in Dundalk Institute of Technology with a BSc (Hons) in Biopharmaceutical Science. She did her PhD with Professor David Brayden in the School of Veterinary Medicine, UCD. The title of her thesis was “Use of permeation enhancers and nanotechnology to increase intestinal peptide permeability”. During her PhD she was part of the SFI funded Irish Drug Delivery Network and the European Union funded consortium TRANS-INT which investigated ways to overcome the barriers to oral drug delivery. She has twice been funded as a post-doctoral researcher by Gattefosse, France investigating their lipid-based excipient such as Labrasol® as intestinal permeation enhancers. She has also worked as a post-doc investigating the anti-inflammatory properties of seaweed extracts as part of, the SFI funded, Macroalgal Fibre Initiative: ‘natural molecules naturally’ project. Fiona has presented at the Crossing Biological Barriers Conference, Dresden (2015), at the annual Controlled Release Society meeting in Boston (2017) and at the 11th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Granada, Spain (2018). Fiona was awarded the Research and Development Award 2018 from the UK and Ireland Controlled Release Society. This provided a bursary for her to visit the laboratory of Prof. Véronique Preat at Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Fiona has twice won the personalised medicine moderated poster session at the UCD Conway Festival (2016 & 2018). She also won best post-doc presentation at 10th Annual Irish Epithelial Physiology Society annual meeting. Fiona was a member of the European Network on Understanding Gastrointestinal Absorption-related Processes (UNGAP).