Engagement & Impact | Meet the Team

Head of Research Impact, Engagement and Communications

Email: gordon.cooke@tudublin.ie

Tel: +353 1 220 7910

Bio

I am the Head of Research Impact, Engagement and Communications at TU Dublin, where I lead the university's efforts to demonstrate and grow the societal value of research. I set the strategic direction for how our academics plan, evidence, and communicate the wider significance of their findings, and I run the team that delivers the support behind it. The audiences we reach range from policymakers and industry partners to community groups and the general public. Whether the task is shaping the impact case for a major funding bid or getting results in front of the people who can act on them, I combine institutional leadership with hands-on guidance and the tools researchers need to widen their reach.

Prior to holding this position, I was the Research Impact Lead, a lecturer in the School of Chemical & BioPharmaceutical Sciences, and an active researcher. I bring an unusual vantage point to the role: I am also an active microbiologist and principal investigator, so I understand the pressures of designing studies, winning grants, and publishing from the inside. I completed my PhD in 2004 at TU Dublin (Tallaght campus) before undertaking a Newman Fellowship at UCD, where I studied Barrett’s Metaplasia. I then worked as a Research Assistant in the School of Nursing at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, before returning to Ireland in 2008 to continue postdoctoral research at UCD in pulmonary fibrosis and bacterial infection. My subsequent work explored the role of extracellular vesicles in fibrotic disease and infection. In 2016, I joined TU Dublin and established my own research group investigating bacterial resistance and the contribution of extracellular vesicles to disease. 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0366-3603

PURE Profile: https://researchprofiles.tudublin.ie/en/persons/dr-gordon-cooke/