Cathal O’Donoghue has been the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at NUI Galway and Professor of Public and Social Policy since 2016. Prior to this, and since 2005, he was Head of Teagasc’s Rural Economy and Development Programme, one of the four research programmes of Teagasc. He was a member of the Fund Council of CGIAR, a $1 billion a year International Agri-Food Research organisation from 2014-2016. 
From 2012-to 2014 Cathal was CEO of the Irish Government’s Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas, Chairman of the Irish Sport Horse Strategy Committee 2013-2015, President of the International Microsimulation Association 2011-2015, and was on the Executive of the UK Agricultural Economics Society. 

He is a UCC graduate, a statistician and economist by training, has post-graduate degrees from Oxford, UCD, the LSE, and Warwick, and has worked at the ESRI, UK Government Economics Service, the University of Cambridge and NUI Galway. His personal research programme involves the development and use of policy simulation models, for which he holds a Chair (extra ordinary (adjunct)) at the University of Maastricht, as well as an adjunct position in UCD. He has published over 150 research papers, five books and supervised over 25 PhD students to completion. He has been an advisor to many international organisations and was a long-term advisor to the UK Government’s Department of Work and Pensions on policy modelling earlier in his career.