DrStephen Fitzsimons

Dr. Stephen Fitzsimons is a Teaching Fellow contributing to the Pharmacology and Neuroscience programmes in the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science at UCD. He recently completed an MSCA Global Research Fellowship at the Conway Institute at UCD. Stephen graduated from UCD with an honours degree in Pharmacology and, in 2019, completed his Research Ireland funded PhD at UCD studying the molecular mechanisms of atherosclerosis in the context of cardiovascular disease.

In 2020, Stephen performed postdoctoral research in a UCD-Beacon Hospital collaboration which identified novel plasma biomarkers for coronary artery disease. He further developed his interest in microRNAs and macrophages at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where he demonstrated the anti-inflammatory effects of antisense oligonucleotides in human macrophages.

In 2022, he became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, researching a rare cerebrovascular disease, CADASIL, and was awarded an MSCA Global Fellowship in 2023 to pursue this research, with a return phase to UCD in 2025. This research involves the use of clinical samples to understand early- and late-stage disease, and the use of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to model the blood-brain interface. His current research is on NOTCH3 signalling and developing multicellular models, using organoids and zebrafish, to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying vascular dementia.