Professor Rosemary O’Connor joined the Department of Biochemistry in University College Cork in 1997, and since then, she has established the Cell Biology Laboratory and a successful research programme in the broad area of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-I) signalling in normal cells and cancer. The research team is engaged in a number of research programmes and projects that are principally focused on the regulation of IGF signalling and the identification and characterization of new proteins/genes that mediate its activity with a view to (1) suppressing cancer progression and drug resistance and (2) promoting tissue regeneration in response to acute trauma.

Professor O’Connor was a founding Investigator of the Biosciences Institute and is the Director of a structured PhD training program in Cancer Biology. She has served on a number of scientific boards and advisory committees for the European Union, Science Foundation Ireland, the Breast Cancer Campaign (UK), and Irish Cancer Society. She also co-ordinates an EU FP7 Industry and Academia partnership programme (IAPP) in collaboration with Almac Diagnostics in Belfast, which aims to identify clinically useful markers of the IGF pathway in ovarian cancer. She collaborates with colleagues in UK, USA, Czechoslovakia, and Australia on projects relating to IGF and insulin ligands and antagonists in cancer and cell regeneration.