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Where Are They Now? Thi Nga Tran

First published: 08 October 2025 Last updated: 22 December 2025

In order to show the positive impact of the ADMIRE Programme on the career development prospects of the Fellows, this series – entitled Where Are They Now? – looks at what the Fellows have been doing since the end of their Fellowship. In this edition Dr Thi Nga Tran describes her journey to becoming a winning a prestigious SFI-IRC Pathway Fellowship and moving to the University of Galway.

Dr. Thi Nga Tran is currently a principal investigator – SFI-IRC Pathway Fellow – of EcoMed group at School of Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland. In December 2021, Dr. Tran was awarded an ADMIRE Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship, funded by Science Foundation Ireland and European Commission, to carry out an innovative project entitled "Advanced and Functional CO2-Derived Biocomposites Based on Sustainable and Water-Based Process" (ECOSITE). ECOSITE was hosted by Prof. Maurice Collins (Bernal Institute- University of Limerick) and Prof. Michael Morris (Trinity College Dublin). This project provided a water-based approach to obtain thin film as medical devices that can deliver multiple drugs with different solubility in water, leveraging their therapeutic efficacy and achieving synergistic effects. Since being awarded ADMIRE-MSCA fellowship, she has developed the interest in sustainable technology for advanced biomaterials, with a strong focus on drug delivery, wound treatment and tissue engineering applications. Thanks to all the valuable experiences and support during ADMIRE fellowship, Dr. Tran has been awarded a SFI-IRC Pathway grant, funded by Research Ireland, to start up her own research group at the University of Galway since September 2024. In this SFI-IRC Pathway project (WOUNDER), she proposed to develop novel nanocomposite thin films made of functional CO2-derived polymers and stimuli-responsive nanoparticles to deliver therapeutics in a programmable manner, offering a more efficacious treatment in wound healing and beyond. Recently, she has secured a funding form Enterprise Ireland under Horizon Europe Co-ordinator Proposal Preparation Support Scheme to prepare an ERC Starting Grant. Dr. Tran's goal is to consolidate a multi-disciplinary research group including chemists, materials scientists, biologists, and engineers to realize the potential of active and renewable materials for a wide range of applications, focusing on smart, novel, renewable and sustainable polymeric biomaterials for medical devices and advanced health care.

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