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.
