GMIT appoints two new Heads of Dept in Business and Science

GMIT has appointed Dr Lisa Ryan to the new post of Head of Department of Natural Sciences and Eamon Walsh to the post of Head of Department of Accounting and Information Systems at GMIT’s Galway (Dublin Road) campus.

Dr Ryan takes on the brand new post as head of the new department within the School of Science and Computing. The new department was established to cater for the growing numbers of Science students in GMIT; Mr Walsh succeeds Carmel Brennan, former Head of the existing Department within the School of Business. Ms Brennan has been appointed GMIT Retention Officer.

Eamon Walsh was formerly a lecturer in Software Development at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Physics in the GMIT School of Science.  His specialist teaching areas include Web Technologies, Cloud Computing and Computer Architecture.



Eamon has over 20 years’ industry experience, working for both multi-nationals in Ireland and overseas and SMEs in technical and management roles including running his own business for ten years; in 2009 his company won an ITAG award for innovation in business in the area of Computer Virtualisation.



He has a first class honours degree in Applied Physics & Electronics and a Masters in Business Administration from NUI Galway. His research interests include Learning Technologies and the Internet of Things.

Eamon is also a long-time campaigner for better rights for people with disabilities and has held a number of board positions over the past decade for registered disability charities.

Dr Lisa Ryan has a first class honours degree in Nutritional Science and a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from UCC. Her first postdoctoral experience was an Enterprise Ireland-funded project involving a collaboration between the Chemistry department and the Nutrition department at UCC. She subsequently embarked on a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)-funded postdoctoral research fellow led by Professor Nora O’Brien, UCC.

Dr Ryan moved to the UK to a Senior Lectureship in Human Nutrition at Bournemouth University before moving on to another Senior Lectureship at Oxford Brookes University in 2008 where she joined the Functional Food Centre, a research centre dedicated to the evaluation of the effect of functional foods on human health, and established the Phytochemical Research Group. In 2010 she was asked to take over the running of the Functional Food Centre as Operations Director and turned the research centre into one of the few profit-generating organisations within the University. 

Dr Ryan was invited to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, to help establish the BASE (Be Active Sleep & Eat) Research Facility and lead the Functional Food research stream. Dr Ryan has attracted considerable research income in the area of phytochemicals and functional foods.  To date she has worked with over 50 industry partners including small discrete projects and larger clinical trials and has also attracted research funding from competitive funding agencies such as the Medical Research Council (MRC, UK), The Nuffield Trust (UK) and The Wellcome Trust (UK).

Last year Dr Ryan was awarded the prestigious Agrifood Fellowship in Australia to investigate the potential of marine polyphenols as anti-diabetic agents. She is widely published in the area of functional foods and has given many invited national and international presentations. 

Dr Ryan also has a very keen interest in Sport and Exercise Nutrition and outside of her formal academic role has worked as a sports nutritionist for a number of rugby, hockey and AFL teams.  While in the UK, she worked with some of the triathletes and cyclists for the 2012 Olympics.

Dr Ryan has recently returned to Ireland from Australia to accept the post of Head of the Natural Sciences Department in the School of Science and Computing at GMIT.