On behalf of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, we would like to extend our sincere thanks to Dermot Byrne, Mary O'Neill, Paula Walsh, Phillip Roche, James Conroy, Thomas Rowlands, and the wider team at Zoetis for warmly welcoming our students to their site in Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow recently.
This was the first site visit of the year, organised by Course Coordinator Lorna Loughrey for our January 2026 intake of students on the MSc Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Technology programme, and it provided a fantastic insight into the manufacturing processes at Zoetis. It was great to see first-hand the importance of quality at the company to ensure and maintain the highest standards in pet/companion and livestock care.
The team’s expertise and willingness to share their knowledge was both engaging and highly informative for students. Hearing the experience from alumni of the programme, now working at Zoetis, also really helped to underscore the importance of the role of the Qualified Person (QP).
The MSc in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Technology teaches students all about pharmaceutical manufacturing and medicine quality, while also fulfilling the EU Educational Requirements to be a QP. The programme has a professional, strategic and economic impact on the individual students and the companies our graduates work for. Although there are some site visits and in-person events, the course is fully online, with accessible alternatives for at-distance students.
Programme Director Dr Bernard Naughton commented: "Site visits such as this are the lifeblood of the MSc degree and expose our students to cutting edge technologies in state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. The programme simply wouldn’t be the same without them."
An enormous thank you once again to Zoetis for the recent visit, and we look forward to our upcoming Second Year visit to AbbVie and Steris in Westport, Co. Mayo next month.
