ProfHelena Kelly

Prof Helena Kelly is Head of School of Pharmacy & Biomolecular Sciences (PBS) and a Professor in Drug Delivery. She became Head of  School in August 2024. A registered pharmacist, Helena graduated with a BSc (Pharm) from Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and subsequently undertook her PhD in the area of stimuli-responsive hydrogels and sustained drug delivery in the Department of Pharmaceutics, TCD. After completing her PhD, Helena spent eight years in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry working across a range of areas including process development and scale up, technical manufacturing operations, clinical trial manufacture and CMC aspects of the regulatory process. Helena returned to academia in the School of Pharmacy at RCSI in 2008, when she was appointed Lecturer, with subsequent promotions to Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Associate Professor in 2020.

Prior to being appointed Head of School, she was Deputy Head (Programmes Innovation) in PBS with responsibility for the implementation of two new programmes, the MSc in Technologies and Analytics in Precision Medicine (TAPM) and BSc in Advanced Therapeutic Technologies (ATT). The development of these programmes was funded through a €7.8m HEA Human Capital Initiative award titled 'Enabling Future Pharma -Beyond the Pill'. From 2017 to 2022 Helena was the academic lead for the RCSI collaboration with Soochow University located in Suzhou, China. This has ultimately led to the establishment of the International College for Pharmaceutical Innovation (ICPI), with the first cohort of 158 students commencing in Sept 2024. She has also been involved in the development of a number of other international partnerships and has been involved in Erasmus+ exchange programmes and has a particular interest in student mobility and internationalisation.

From a research perspective, Helena is focused on the development of novel drug delivery platforms for loco-regional applications in combination with minimally invasive medical device technology. Her research places a strong emphasis on translational research. She is a co-founder and CSO of OncoLize, a spin-out company seeking to commercialise the ChemoGell technology, invented in Prof. Kellys research group. ChemoGell is a novel patented thermoresponsive hydrogel platform for intratumoral drug delivery. In 2019, she participated in the NSF-SFI Innovation Corps (iCorps) programme for entrepreneur scientists and has a strong interest in the role of innovation in the HE section. She has been a Principal Investigator and deputy co-ordinator in two EU consortia, AMCARE (Advanced Materials for Cardiac Regeneration, FP7, 2013-2017) and DRIVE (Diabetes Reversing Implants for Enhanced Viability and long-term Efficacy, Horizon 2020, 2014-2018) where she led on the formulation of hydrogel delivery platforms for minimally invasive delivery clinical applications.