Professor Cormac Taylor, UCD Professor of Cellular Physiology, is to be recognised with the 2017 Takeda Distinguished Research Award by the American Physiological Society’s Gastrointestinal & Liver Physiology Section. The prestigious prize is awarded annually to an outstanding investigator who is internationally recognised for his/her contribution to research in areas represented by the Section. The announcement of the award to Professor Taylor was made at the 2016 APS Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego on Tuesday 5th April 2016 and will be presented at the 2017 meeting. This will be the first time that the award has been made to a scientist from outside the United States.
Prof Taylor leads a research group at the UCD Conway Institute investigating the mechanisms by which low oxygen levels (hypoxia) regulates transcriptional events in epithelial cells. The group explores the regulation of global gene expression in response to hypoxia and the modification of transcriptional regulators which underlies the induction of such events. His research into the cellular response to hypoxia has revealed novel mechanisms whereby protective endogenous processes can be exploited for therapeutic gain in the context of prevalent chronic inflammatory disease.
The UCD Conway Fellow has received numerous awards in recognition of his academic achievements throughout a distinguished career. In June 2013, he was elected to the ranks of the Royal Irish Academy, the highest Irish academic honour. In November 2014, he was recognised for outstanding scientific mentorship with the 2014 Nature Award for Mentoring in Science. In May 2015, Prof Taylor secured and hosted a highly successful Keystone Symposium on Hypoxia in Dublin.
After obtaining his PhD in pharmacology from the UCD Department of Pharmacology in 1996, Prof Taylor undertook a research fellowship in Harvard Medical School at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He returned to Ireland in 2001 when he was appointed College Lecturer in the UCD School of Medicine and established an independent research group at the UCD Conway Institute. He was promoted to Associate Professor (2006) and to Professor (2010).
Prof Taylor has successfully supervised 16 PhD students, and published over 100 articles, accumulating in excess of 8,000 citations and achieving a h-factor of 44. He has maintained continuous funding through the Science Foundation Ireland investigator award programme since 2002 and has held career development awards from the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health (USA). Prof Taylor is Managing Editor of Frontiers in Biosciences and an Editorial Board Member of the American Journal of Physiology.
