Prof. Kenneth Dawson is Director of the Centre for BioNano Interactions (CBNI), which is the National platform for excellence in the interaction of nanoparticles with living systems. He is also the lead investigator of the Bionanoscience Activities in University College Dublin, and Chair of Physical Chemistry, as well as being a Director of the Complexity Centre in Rome.
 
His professional roles include participation in the OECD and ISO working groups on standards for Nanotechnology, acting as the European representative in the Global NanoEHS task-force and in ICON (International council on Nanotechnology), and co-ordinator of several large research projects in the area of nanosafety and nanomedicine.

He is currently Editor of Current Opinion in Colloid Science, Senior Editor of Physica, and former President of the European Colloid and Interface Society.

He has several years of experience of leading international research teams at the interface between materials and biology, including one of the first publications applying transcriptomics to materials (PNAS, 2003, 100, 6331). Recent work has focused on the biomolecule corona that surrounds nanoparticles in biological milieu, the potential role of nanoparticles in mediating protein fibrillation, and the development of a rational framework to understand the interactions of nanoparticles with living systems.