Rate My Professor James O’Donnell

Professor James O’Donnell is Professor of Vascular Biology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Director of the Irish Centre for Vascular Biology. He also serves as the George Gabriel Stokes Professor of Haematology at Trinity College Dublin and as a Consultant Haematologist in the National Coagulation Centre at St James’s Hospital, Dublin. He obtained his medical degree (MB, BCh) from Trinity College Dublin in 1990, completed internship and residency training in Australia, and undertook clinical haematology training at the Hammersmith and Royal Free Hospitals in London. In 1998 he received a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship and was awarded a PhD from Imperial College London in 2001, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship and appointment as Senior Lecturer at Imperial College in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Royal College of Pathologists (UK). Upon returning to Ireland in 2005, Professor O’Donnell became the first clinician scientist to receive the Science Foundation Ireland President of Ireland Young Investigator award. His research focuses on vascular biology, haemostasis, thrombosis, and von Willebrand disease. The Haemostasis Research laboratory he leads has secured more than £12 million in peer-reviewed grant funding since 2006 from sources including Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board, the Irish Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Children’s Research Centre. He has authored more than 120 publications in high-impact peer-reviewed journals and has delivered invited lectures at major international meetings such as the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, the Gordon Conference on Hemostasis, and the Congress of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis. In 2026 he was awarded €2 million to lead a national study on blood groups.