The Museum of Innovation exhibition at Ulster Transport Museum, Cultra, has announced its first living ‘Innovator in Focus’ as Professor Andriana Margariti.

A professor at Queen’s University Belfast, Professor Margariti is renowned for her ground-breaking research into stem cells to support regenerative medicine.

The exhibition in Ulster Transport Museum’s redeveloped Land, Sea and Sky galleries represents new thinking and focuses on telling a bigger story, with a view to the museum’s transport and industry collections becoming an engine of STEM learning and skills development.

The recognition was made after Professor Margariti’s team became the first in the world to establish that the gene QKI-7 causes cardiovascular disease in people with diabetes.

The breakthrough, which was awarded a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council New Investigator prize, was assisted by funding from the British Heart Foundation, Medical Research Council, and the Department for the Economy.

All of the objects on display at the exhibition and their inventors have contributed in some way to Northern Ireland’s long and illustrious legacy of innovation. Some of the inspiring stories told in the exhibition include that of John DeLorean, whose iconic DeLorean sports car, built in a bespoke state-of-the-art Dunmurry factory, is given the 21st century treatment in the new exhibition.