Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland investing €50m to expand its research activities

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is to invest €50 million in a major drive to expand its research activities. The five-year investment plan will create 100 research jobs, including 40 full-time academic posts, and will provide new laboratories and facilities to support their work.

Effectively it will double the research capacity of the RCSI, the only private medical school in the State, says its director of research, Prof Ray Stallings. "We are very excited. It is an exciting time for research as we embark on this programme."

The college will formally announce the research development plan later this week.

Structural developments

About half the money will go into structural developments including labs and half will go into creating the academic posts including 20 associate professorships and 20 research lecturer positions. There will also be additional PhD and MSc students, says Prof Stallings, who is also the college’s chair of cancer genetics.

"It is quite a big project and particularly big for the college as well. We have the deepest hole in the ground in Ireland at the moment as our new building on York Street will have five stories above ground and five stories below ground," he says.

"We are also providing additional space to our building at Beaumont Hospital at the Education and Research Centre as well as making improvements at our St Stephen's Green campus."

It is “very much part of a strategy launched in November 2014. Basically it is an interconnection strategy that links research and education. The people we will be hiring over the next five years will be contributing to the teaching mission of the college as well as the research mission,” he says. “The investment will advance our strategic goals of pursuing research and education for the advancement of human health.”

Research mission

The centre will focus on surgical and healthcare outcomes and how research can be used to inform policy and practice to make a difference to patients and the healthcare system, he explains.

“Our research mission is to improve human health by promoting innovative research that leads to advances in diagnostics, therapeutics and new medical devices,” he says.

It is also looking at health care delivery issues, wider health policy and clinical practice as well as research that enhances the education of healthcare professionals.

With this in mind the college is creating a Healthcare Outcomes Research Centre to follow through on these ambitions. The overall goal is to transfer research discoveries more quickly into clinical practice bringing benefits to the patient.

It will also strengthen the links the college already has with companies that can commercialise discoveries made in the college’s laboratories, says Stallings.

An aim of the approach is to improve the college's competitiveness for European funding via the Horizon 2020 research budget. "We will provide a great deal of assistance in applying for European Union funding," he says.

“Our research strategy is also very much innovation-driven, with results that encourage interaction with industry. We want to have an impact in terms of industry engagement and this will have a ripple effect for the Irish economy,” he says.

There should be no difficulty filling the academic posts and the college plans to recruit on an international basis.

“Now that Ireland is beginning to come out of the recession there is a huge pent-up demand for positions here, particularly at senior post-doc level.”

Capable researchers

There are many highly experienced and capable researchers who have gone through two or three post-doctoral appointments and are ready to look for something more permanent.

“Our research lecturer appointments will be tenure tracked. The will last for five years but there is no barrier to becoming staff based on performance. It is quite unique and different and we are creating a career progression pathway,” says Prof Stallings.

"It will also help to increase our international reputation as well," he says. The college is ranked among the top 50 most international universities in the world, according to the Times Higher Education University World Rankings, 2014-15. It is one of the constituent higher education institutions within the National University of Ireland.

The new research staff and facilities will add to the 450 scientists and clinician researchers already working in its research institute.

It has invested €59 million of its own non-exchequer funding in research and related facilities and staff over the past decade, the college says. It receives annual grant income of about €25 million a year.

It raises funding through a number of channels, not least property. Last week this newspaper reported that the college had sold Beaux Lane House on Mercer Street for €59 million.

It had an annual rental income of more than €2.7 million. It has other property holdings that bring in rental income, other investments and of course gifts and bequests, he says.

Initially the college will emphasise research in the surgical area, in part because it is in a unique position to do this and is a traditional role for the institution, Prof Stallings says. “It is the national centre for the training of and certification of surgeons,” he adds.

Clinical studies

The research effort will expand quickly however into other areas of interest including more clinical studies to help improve medical treatments for patients and also translational research to help patients but also commercialise discoveries.

The college already has a research agenda for when recruitment for the new posts gets underway.

It plans to delve into specific areas including neurological and psychiatric disorders; biomaterials; drug and stem cell delivery; therapeutics; cancer; infection; immunity and inflammation; respiratory diseases; population health and health service research; cardiovascular diseases and health professions education.

This represents a wide brief for the college’s existing and soon to be appointed research staff but it will have the people who can pursue these research goals and in the process have an international impact.

Research is a core strength of the college and excellence in research is also critical for the quality of its educational activities, says its chief executive Prof Cathal Kelly. Research and the educational mission work together to contribute to the benefit of human health, he says.