The State's foremost nutritionist, Prof Michael Gibney, is to leave Trinity College Dublin and bring his entire research team of 19 people to University College Dublin. Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports.
His move from Trinity's medical school, where he is professor of nutrition in the department of clinical medicine, has been welcomed by a spokeswoman for UCD.
She said that the university was delighted and Prof Gibney would be a great addition.
The move has created a stir in academic circles where movement on such scale is rare and is being seen as a major coup by UCD.
Confirming that he would be leaving Trinity after 23 years this autumn, Prof Gibney said that he had been very happy at Trinity but a new opportunity presented itself in UCD.
"Every university has its priorities and UCD wants to build a centre of excellence in the food and health areas and that is where nutrition comes into play," he told The Irish Times yesterday.
He said nutrition was not a priority at Trinity but the work he and his team were doing fitted into the framework at UCD where nutrition was now being made a priority.
He said in all, 19 people would be making the move to UCD where it had been said the entire spectrum of food from health, veterinary, food science to agriculture was once described to him as "everything from slurry to curry".
He accepted that the move represented a big investment by UCD, but said it intended to enlarge and develop the area of nutrition.
The UCD spokeswoman said Prof Gibney's work fitted in with the thematic areas of food and health which was being developed at the university.
She said movement on such a large scale was not without precedent in Irish academic circles and there were areas which needed the critical mass of a full research team.
Prof Gibney, who is a fellow of Trinity College and was the college's dean of research from 2001 to 2004, has a global reputation in the area of metabolic and molecular nutrition, in public health nutrition and in probabilistic risk analysis.
He is co-ordinator of a major EU-funded research project on the metabolic syndrome which is the largest study of its kind in Europe.