A professor’s journey from humble beginnings to a higher doctorate of science

Neil Rowan. Image: Jeff Harvey

Prof Neil Rowan sits down with SiliconRepublic.com to chat life, work and advice for students.

As he describes it, Prof Neil Rowan was thrust into the world rather prematurely. Coming in at less than a kilogram at birth, Rowan tells me he spent months in an incubator, sure that he wasn’t supposed to make it.

Later, he wonders if that’s what gave him the drive – a sort of “accelerator button” on his life, firmly pressed, “always”.

From breaking regional sprinting records at the local athletic club as a teenager, to being awarded a higher doctorate of science some four decades later, Prof Rowan has achieved more than many – especially for a boy from a middle-class family from Coosan in Athlone.

Among his very large list of accomplishments, Rowan is an expert in medtech, food security, environmental sustainability and bioeconomy, and the inaugural director of the Bioscience Research Institute at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS). He is ranked number one in the world for decontamination research.

He is also on a United Nations panel on the effects of nuclear war, as well as on the new National Science Advisory panel and a new scientific committee for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. He also works closely with the European Commission and Research Ireland on various innovation programmes. I will refrain from adding to this list, lest I overwhelm the reader.

“The funny thing is, I’m colourblind,” Rowan tells me. “I only ever saw green … so I was constantly ‘going’.”

One of five children, Rowan was the first from any generation in his family to have attended university. His parents never finished school, he tells me.

“My dad was 52 years working with the one company [fixing weighing scales],” he says. “Going to college [at the time] would have been very expensive.”

A football scholarship led Rowan to the University of Galway in the 1980s, after which the young academic made his way to the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow on a different scholarship to take the first-ever course at the institution looking at biotechnology.

10 papers and a PhD later, Rowan was appointed as a lecturer – and then a senior lecturer at the University. He was 29 years old.

Rewarded for decades of research

Rowan made headlines earlier this year for being recognised with a higher doctorate of science by the University of Strathclyde – a first for any academic working in TUS.

A higher doctorate of science is above a PhD. It is the highest academic degree in the Irish and UK university systems, awarded to scholars who demonstrate a significant contribution to their field over several decades. Fewer than 10 higher doctorates are awarded per year in Ireland. Rowan describes the degree as a ‘black swan’, a definite rare occurrence.

“Every day is a school day”, according to Rowan, who has published a minimum of six to seven research papers every year for the past 30 years. His higher doctorate thesis comprises 150 peer-reviewed journal papers presented in two volumes, totalling approximately 1,600 pages.

The submission covers his research from 1995 to the present day, delving into his work in advancing the fields of disease prevention and control that cross-cut medtech, food safety and food security globally.

Rowan’s still surprised at his achievements. He tells me that he is “constantly surprised, pleasantly surprised” at any recognition, even after all these years.

Throughout our chat, the professor made several mentions of ‘firsts’ in his various fields of research.

According to Rowan, he created the first-ever toxigenic-mould growth prediction model for the built environment in the early 1990s. It was the first to use computer simulations and algorithms for elucidating biological solutions to inform improvements in sustainable building design that subsequently became a European reference model.

More recently, Neil leads the first ever bio-economy demonstrator facility at scale using freshwater fish in peatlands, now used in Ireland and to be replicated across Europe.

Prof Rowan introduced the first PhDs in biomedical sciences, health and sterilisation science in TUS, and also reported on the first use of several disinfection technologies such as pulsed light, pulsed electric fields and pulsed plasma for disease prevention and food security, including from a underpinning mechanistic perspective.

An educator and an enabler

When asked how he describes his work, Rowan says he’s both an “educator and an enabler”.

“I think I enable people to help themselves,” he explains.

He has supervised around 120 undergraduate projects, as well as around 40 PhDs with industrial applications – such as a new vaporised hydrogen peroxide terminal sterilisation method, or a new classification system for medical device features and cleaning for improved patient safety.

Rowan says he loves to teach and that he resonates with his students. He says his work has a “lasting legacy”, given his students’ creative footprints on society.

Through our chat, the professor highlighted the importance of being an “agile listener”.

“I was always an active listener and prepared to spend considerable time studying to understanding to get to the root of things.”

However, also important is having ambition, he says. “I was always brave and ambitious. I was always not afraid of taking on very grand challenges. I was always trying. I was never not afraid to do things.”

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