Professor Fergal Malone, Professor and Chairman of the RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the Rotunda Hospital, has been appointed as the next Master and Chief Executive Officer of the Rotunda, for a seven-year term. Fergal, a Waterford native, will be the 39th consecutive Master of the Rotunda since its inception in 1745.

A graduate of UCD, Fergal worked as a consultant at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York where he directed one of the largest high risk obstetric programmes in the United States, specialising in advanced obstetric ultrasound, prenatal diagnosis, multiple gestation management, and the care of women with challenging obstetric problems. ]

In the United States he directed world class research for the National Institutes of Health, including the renowned FASTER Trial which documented the optimal series of prenatal tests for foetal abnormalities. He returned to Ireland in 2005, after 14 years in the US, when he was appointed Professor and Chairman of RCSI's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology which is based at the Rotunda.

Professor Malone has worked at the Rotunda for the past 10 years and will take up this new position next year, replacing Dr Sam Coulter Smith as Master of the Rotunda Hospital, the oldest maternity hospital in the world.