The Charitable Infirmary Charitable Trust (CICT), Ireland’s oldest charity, has awarded two medical research bursaries to teams at Beaumont Hospital to fund scientific and medical research and simultaneously support education and development through pursuit of MD or PhD qualifications. Each award is for two years and has an annual value of up to €75,000.

Following an open competition, the Medical Group of CICT awarded the bursaries to:
Dr. Christina Campbell, Respiratory Department, Beaumont Hospital and Dr Olufemi Olumide Aoko, Hepatology Unit, Beaumont Hospital.

Dr Campbell is a specialist trainee in Pulmonary Medicine in Beaumont hospital. She will evaluate susceptibility to obstructive sleep apnea in a post SARS-CoV-2 infection population. She hopes to establish the relationship between this condition and the upper airway microenvironment utilizing state-of-the-art next-generation sequencing. She will be working directly under the supervision of the chief investigator for this study, Dr Imran Sulaiman. Dr Sulaiman has recently been appointed as a consultant physician to Beaumont hospital, having worked for many years in New York University, NYC, the United States. He has an international reputation in the area of profiling the microbiome of the upper and lower airways, in addition to acknowledged expertise in the diagnosis and management of obstructive sleep apnea.

Dr Aoko is a specialist trainee in Hepatology. He will study the impact of bariatric endoscopy on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This is a novel clinical approach to treating the most common cause of liver disease in Ireland and internationally. He will specifically evaluate the impact of this novel technique on metabolic and histologic parameters in obese patients with NAFLD. He will be working directly under the supervision of the Chief investigator for this study, Dr John Ryan, Consultant Hepatologist, Beaumont Hospital. Dr Ryan has recently been appointed as a consultant physician to Beaumont Hospital, having worked for many years in the Royal Free hospital London and Oxford University, United Kingdom. He has an international reputation in the area of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and has pioneered new diagnostic and therapeutic interventions in this area.

Commenting on the awards, Michael Patten, Chairman of the CICT said, “The CICT goes back to the foundation in 1718 of the Charitable Infirmary (better known as Jervis St Hospital), the first voluntary hospital in the British Isles. Today the Trust continues its focus on serving Dublin by supporting medical excellence at Beaumont Hospital and giving financial aid to Dublin charities serving the poor and underprivileged.

“These new bursaries are designed to promote talent development and scientific/medical research and discovery at Beaumont and are open to all the caring professions based on the hospital campus. We were delighted with the sheer quality of applications for these inaugural bursaries which bodes well for medical discovery at Beaumont. We wish the recipients well in the coming years and will track their progress with great interest”, Mr Patten concluded.

The Bursaries are named in honour of Professor Kieran Taaffe, a long serving and inspirational member of the CICT Managing Committee, who was a passionate advocate of education and research.

Staff at Beaumont Hospital are welcome to apply to become members of the Trust at any time.

Since 1987, the Trust has donated over €5 million to research and teaching projects at Beaumont Hospital and at its medical school, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) and to Dublin charities.