NUI MAYNOOTH has appointed Dr Philip Nolan as its new president, succeeding Prof John G Hughes who resigned the position last year.

Nolan, who will take up the position in August, is the current Registrar and Deputy President at UCD, a position he has held since 2004.

Confirmation of Nolan’s appointment came this afternoon from the university’s Governing Authority. Nolan’s predecessor, John G Hughes, quit the post in Maynooth last September to become the Vice-Chancellor at Bangor University in Wales.

Nolan said he intended to consolidate NUI Maynooth’s “distinctive and special contribution to our national system of higher education” and would seek to develop its reputation overseas.

NUI Maynooth’s press release said Nolan had been widely acknowledged as being part of the success of UCD’s own restructuring, which has seen widespread internal reform since Nolan became Registrar in Belfield – an appointment which coincided with that of its current president, Dr Hugh Brady.

In particular, Nolan was accredited with the introduction of the ‘UCD Horizons’ system which allows students to take classes from courses unrelated to their own, and of the adoption of a fully modular system.

Nuala O’Loan, who chairs the governing authority of NUI Maynooth, said Nolan had been a “proven leader and an academic of considerable international pedigree.”

UCD president Hugh Brady said Nolan was a man “of extraordinary ability, drive and integrity”.

Nolan graduated from Medicine in UCD in 1991 and was subsequently awarded a PhD for research into the control of breathing and the cardiovascular system during sleep.

Another vice-president in UCD, Prof Des Fitzgerald, is currently in the running to become the new provost of Trinity College, though he is considered an outside bet by Paddy Power.

Six academics are in the running to succeed Dr John Hegarty, whose ten-year term in Trinity ends this September. The election to succeed him takes place on April 2.