Professor Catherine Godson is Full Professor of Molecular Medicine and Director of the UCD Diabetes Complications Research Centre at the UCD Conway Institute. She has served as Vice President, Innovation at UCD.
She obtained her BSc and PhD from UCD and, following postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Geneva and at University of California San Diego, joined the faculty of Harvard University. She subsequently returned to Dublin where she leads a group of investigators whose research focuses on innate immunity and chronic complications of diabetes. Amongst her research contributions was the discovery that lipoxins, endogenously generated lipid mediators, promote the resolution of inflammation. These molecules are now being developed towards clinical application through Attenuate Therapeutics, a company that she co-founded in 2022.
Together with colleagues at UCD and The Mater University and Beaumont Hospitals she has identified several novel mediators of progression and potential regression in diabetic kidney disease. She teaches Principles of Pharmacology in The School of Medicine, UCD. She has served on the Health Research Board, The European Medical Research Council and The Wellcome Trust’s Physiological Sciences Committee. She was elected to membership of The Royal Irish Academy in 2011 and elected Secretary for Science of the academy in 2020. She is a Trustee of Bart’s Charity, London and was recently appointed to the board of the Irish Research Council. She is Visiting Professor at Monash University, Melbourne and received the Woman in Science Award at The World Congress of Inflammation, Sydney 2019. She was awarded The Graves Medal of The Royal Academy of Medicine, 2021 and The Outstanding Achievement Award of the International Eicosanoid Research Foundation. She is Co-Chair of The American Society for Nephrology 2022 Annual meeting committee.