Award recognition. Trinity academic receives prestigious ‘higher doctorate’

A Dublin Dental School professor has become only the third recipient of a prestigious ‘higher doctorate’ at Trinity College in the last 50 years.

Professor David Coleman has been awarded the Sc.D (doctor of science) in recognition of his substantial and sustained contribution to scientific knowledge in the fields of microbiology, MRSA research and applied and translational research on biofilm control in large water distribution networks in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

The Sc.D is one of the most prestigious higher degrees to be awarded at Trinity College Dublin, with recipients needing to have built up a corpus of published works and be recognised as being of international standing in their field. It is also essential that their contributions have led to major innovations or major new additions to knowledge in their discipline and have resulted in seminal publications that have led to developments by others.

Prof Coleman joined Dublin Dental University Hospital in õ988 and in 2006 he was awarded a personal chair in oral and applied microbiology by Trinity College in recognition of his achievements in scholarship and research.

More recently, Prof Coleman and his colleague Aisling Miller were awarded Health Research Board funding for a project that aims to develop methods to minimise microbial contamination of hospital water and wash hand basins using Ecasol.

The project, entitled ‘Development of Environmentally Friendly Disinfection Technology for Modern Healthcare’, has also been selected as one of the 23 research projects that highlight excellence in the next generation of research by the university.