Professor Ronan O’Regan was appointed Dean at UCD School of Medicine in Sept 1991.
Ronan O’Regan, known as Ronnie, will be remembered especially for developing the School of Medicine at UCD’s Earlsfort Terrace in the 1990’s and in delivering on the move of the last medicine student from Earlsfort Terrace to the purpose build HSC (Health Sciences Centre) at the Belfield Campus in 2007. In doing so his work stands out as among the most significant in the medical history of the State.
The development of the HSC on the Belfield Campus also solved three other urgent problems at that time which included the need to bring UCD’s scattered Schools of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Radiography to one place. This innovation, led by Ronnie also saw nursing given professional degree status, and the latter two Schools (Physiotherapy and Radiography) moving respectively, from the Mater and St Vincent’s Hospitals.
This work involved difficult negotiations with colleagues and Government to finance the development to effect the necessary changes, including sourcing income for the first time, by attracting overseas medicine students, especially from North America and Asia. This was complemented by Ronnie’s long term vision to internationalise both the student and the teaching and research bodies at the School of Medicine.
Prior to his appointment as Dean, Ronnie was appointed as Chair of Physiology at UCD in 1984 following a move home from London. As Chair, he became an internationally recognised expert on a particularly mysterious area of medicine; the carotid body, which is a tiny organ that regulates the levels of oxygen in the human body. Ronnie conducted multiple experiments in this area from the 1970s that were still being cited by peers internationally at the time of his death. Later in his career Ronnie studied water receptors on the tongue of a frog and carbon dioxide receptors of the larynx. The latter experiments revealed a sophisticated metering system of the breath.
Ronnie also served as President of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland from 1995-1997.
Ronnie O’Regan graduated from NUIG School of Medicine in 1964.
RIP 8th July 2020