Kenneth Dawson, Ph.D., is Director of the Centre for BioNano Interactions (CBNI), which is the Irish national platform for excellence in the interaction of nanoparticles with living systems. He is also the lead investigator of the Bionanoscience Activities in University College Dublin, and Chair of Physical Chemistry, as well as being a Director of the Complexity Centre in Rome. He has received several international prizes, including most recently the Cozzarelli prize from the National Academy of Sciences USA, and the Canon and Drefus prizes.

Prof. Dawson’s professional roles include representing Ireland on the OECD and ISO working groups on standards for Nanotechnology, acting as a European representative in ICON (International Council on Nanotechnology), and he is currently Editor of Current Opinion in Colloid Science, Senior Editor of Physica, and a former President of the European Colloid and Interface Society. He coordinates several large European-wide and International research projects in the area of nanosafety and nanomedine. He has several years of experience of leading international research teams at the interface between materials and biology, including one of the first publications applying transcriptomics to materials (PNAS, 2003, 100, 6331).

Prof. Dawson’s research interests include the development of a rational framework in which to investigate and understand the interactions of nano-objects with living systems, and the implementation of quantitatively reproducible approaches to the questions. His recent work has focussed on the biomolecule corona that surrounds nanoparticles in biological milieu, the potential role of nanoparticles in mediating protein fibrillation, and the development of a simple theoretical model for nanoparticle uptake by living cells.

Representative publications:

Barnes CA, Elsaesser A, Arkusz J, Smok A, Palus J, Leśniak A, Salvati A, Hanrahan JP, Jong WH, Dziubałtowska E, Stȩpnik M, Rydzyński K, McKerr G, Lynch I, Dawson KA, Howard CV. Reproducible Comet Assay of Amorphous Silica Nanoparticles Detects No Genotoxicity. Nano Lett. 2008 [Epub ahead of print].

Linse S, Cabaleiro-Lago C, Xue WF, Lynch I, Lindman S, Thulin E, Radford SE, Dawson KA. Nucleation of protein fibrillation by nanoparticles. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007 104, 8691-8696.

Cedervall T, Lynch I, Lindman S, Berggård T, Thulin E, Nilsson H, Dawson KA, Linse S. Understanding the nanoparticle-protein corona using methods to quantify exchange rates and affinities of proteins for nanoparticles. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007 104, 2050-2055.