Neil J Rowan

Professor Rowan (Technological University of the Shannon, TUS) has over 3 decades of experience in supporting, enabling and leading interdisciplinary research for meeting complex societal challenges that has informed multiple strategic policies regionally and internationally. Neil has supervised over 40 PhDs in the areas of medtech, food safety and security, environmental sustainability, bioeconomy and digital transformation. For example he has cross-disciplinary experience in advancing technologies and innovation for stakeholders that includes ecosystem building and modelling for real-world applications.

He appears on Standford list 2025 as top 2% Scientist and ScholarGPS 2025 (top 0.04% Scholar) globally in these fields. He is ranked first globally for advancing decontamination and sterilization in these platforms. He was inaugural co-founder and first Research Manger for Roberston Laboratories for Electronic Sterilization where his research was rated as top of scale by UK Research Assessment Exercise. He holds Adjunct Professorships in several leading universities including School of Medicine, Nursing and Biomedical Science at University of Galway. He was appointed by the United Nations panel for the Effects of Nuclear War (2025-2027). He is inaugural Director of the Bioscience Research Institute at TUS, a position he held for 13 years.

He serves on the editorial board for several leading scientific journals and has contributed previously to scientific committee of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. He holds fellowships to several professional bodies including Institute of Food Science and Technology. He is Principle Investigator (PI) for the first €5M Bioeconomy Demonstration flagship facility at scale in Ireland that harnesses the peatlands as alternative strategy to use of fossil fuels. He is a PI at Research Ireland’s CURAM Centre for Medical Devices. He has published over 200 journal papers in pressing cross-cutting topics that appears in over 7) strategic policy documents globally. He has a strong social medial presence with over 12K+ LinkedIn followers.

His Higher Doctorate of Science thesis is under review at Strathclyde University.