Denis P. Dowling studied chemistry at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), where he graduated in 1984. He then obtained a PhD in inorganic chemistry from University College Dublin in 1988 and a postgraduate diploma in business strategy from the Irish Management Institute (IMI) in 1996. Currently, he is the director of the EUR 20+ million I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. He also leads UCD’s participation in the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in manufacturing. His own research incorporates the related areas of additive manufacturing and surface engineering. The latter includes the use of plasma treatments to tailor the surface properties. He has been published extensively in the areas of plasma processing (particularly using atmospheric treatments) and more recently the processing of polymers, composites and metals by additive manufacturing. He was previously Deputy Director of the SFI Precision Cluster, which was focused on plasma processing (2009–2014). He was a recipient of the UCD Innovation Award (2012) and the gold medal of the Institute of Materials Finishing (2013). Prior to taking up an academic position at UCD in 2008, he worked with Enterprise
Ireland for over 25 years. He led several EU-funded research projects, and he also assisted indigenous companies to develop their own R&D programmes.
