Professor Gerald O’Sullivan, Director of Cork Cancer Research Centre has been elected President of the European Surgical Association (ESA) at its recent annual meeting held in Vienna (April 17th-18th, 2009). Professor O’Sullivan, whose is immediate past President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI), commences this office as President of the ESA immediately and succeeds 2008-2009 President, Professor Janos Kiss of Hungary. 

The European Surgical Association was founded in 1993 and is one of the European's most prestigious surgical organisations. Its members include prominent surgeons from Europe’s leading academic medical institutions. The primary mission of the ESA is to be one of the world’s premier organisations for surgical science, providing a continental forum for discussion on the developing state of general and sub-specialty surgery and the elevation of the standards of the medical and surgical profession. 

Professor O’Sullivan (pictured on the right), a graduate of the National University of Ireland Cork (NUIC), was appointed consultant surgeon at the Mercy University Hospital, Cork in 1985 following surgical residencies in Ireland and the US. Professor O’Sullivan has been a Fellow of RCSI since 1980 and was elected member of Council in 1998. He is also the immediate past president of the RCSI, finishing his presidency in June 2008. 

He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) Glasgow. A renowned surgeon and researcher, he was appointed Chair in the Department of Surgery at NUIC in 1999 and is currently Director of the Cork Cancer Research Centre (CCRC), an independently funded, multi disciplinary organisation which investigates mechanisms that may be applied towards the prevention of cancer development and the control of cancer spread. The CCRC will be celebrating 10 years of cutting edge research in August of this year.

He has pioneered the development of three new treatments for cancer from the laboratory through to early clinical trial. He has been involved in the development of several new surgical innovations and techniques which have been applied to minimally invasive and gastrointestinal surgery. He is co-holder of eight patents, several of which have been commercialised by the University Industrial Programme. His current research interests include the biological behaviour of upper gastrointestinal cancers and the development of novel delivery systems and targets of anti-cancer therapies and the optimisation of anti-cancer chemotherapeutics. 

A distinguished academic and clinician, Professor O’Sullivan has authored and co-authored over 200 papers, ranging from the innovation of surgical techniques to novel oncological therapeutics. He was one of the early pioneers in discovery and development of probiotic bacteria as therapeutics.