David Kavanagh helped map Ireland’s genetic code — Now he’s doing the same for UAE

David Kavanagh (LinkedIn), general manager of Omics at M42, has spent his career building the infrastructure behind population-scale genomics — first in Ireland and now in the UAE. He left his life in Ireland — and his family farm — to move to Abu Dhabi and work with M42. The draw? The massive scale of the Emirati Genome Program, which Kavanagh says is the biggest in the world currently, is driven by a goal of sequencing every Emirati and connecting that data directly to the national health record.

Beyond scale, the value of building a dataset that brings an underrepresented ancestry into the global genome — and ultimately helps drive clinical research, diagnosis, and treatment — is what drives him.

Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a member of the community starts their day — and throws in a couple of questions just for fun. This week, we sat down with Kavanagh to talk about the genome program's next phase, what leading a life-sciences team actually takes, and what he’s reading right now. Edited excerpts from our conversation, lightly cleaned up for clarity:

EnterpriseAM: Tell us a bit about yourself — how did you get into genomics?

David Kavanagh: I did my PhD in University College Dublin over 20 years ago now and moved quickly into commercial roles in life sciences. I co-founded my own business straight after my PhD, which I sold to a US company, then spent time in a consulting role with an Irish health-tech and medical devices business.

In 2017, I joined an Irish venture-backed business involving US VCs and the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Ireland, set up to build a population genomics cohort on the island, where I served as a general manager out of Dublin. The business used human genetics to support drug target discovery.

I spent seven years there, and a little over a year ago, I was approached about a role at M42. It’s a similar kind of infrastructure, but what’s different here is that the UAE government has made a strategic decision to make a genome available for every Emirati. That matters because most global genomics data has been dominated by European and US ancestry, while other populations, including Arab populations, are underrepresented in the global genome map. The UAE is correcting that for Emiratis specifically, which opens the door to real precision medicine in the clinical system.

We’re also increasingly doing what we call clinical reporting — not only generating a genome, but providing consultants who have patients in their care with a diagnostic report that helps them make decisions about the care they’re providing.

E: The most recent figure I’d heard was around 1 mn genetic samples gathered and sequenced. Where are things now?

DK: We’re on track to hit 1 mn this year. It’s really important to note that for many population genome projects, it’s not just about the number of genomes. It’s actually the integration into health records and clinical care that makes this really powerful.

A little over two years ago, we launched a project in partnership with the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Biobank, which is supplementing the genetics that we’ve captured through the program with additional types of samples. For example, an expectant Emirati mother would have the option to store her cord blood and make it available as a source of stem cells for cancer patients requiring a transplant. Again, because of the underrepresentation of the Arab genome, it’s very hard for people in the UAE to get a match on international registries for stem cells, so creating a national infrastructure around that creates real clinical value.

E: What’s the exact role of the Biogenix Center of Excellence you lead in all of that?

DK: M42 itself is a very large business, with 22k employees across 27 countries. We’re supporting everything from dialysis services and fertility treatment to tertiary care — offering a true continuum of care.

We have three platforms. The first is Global Patient Care. The second is Integrated Health Solutions, which houses Biogenix — the laboratory I lead that operates the Emirati Genome Program. This platform also includes our Biobank and IROS, the clinical trial business I direct that supports experimental medicine testing across the UAE and the wider region. The third platform is Digital Health Solutions, which operates Malaffi, the digital health information exchange centralizing all of this clinical data. We’re providing support for these programs across a whole variety of different domains, but when you bring them all together, that’s the true power.

E: What’s in the pipeline for the program in the near term?

DK: The last couple of years have been about building the foundations. Now, the DoH is very keen to demonstrate clinical value quickly for patients, so a lot of our activity has focused on making clinical testing available.

What we’re really excited about right now is that we’re at the threshold of moving to research use cases. We’re making these datasets available for both local and global research. We’re building an infrastructure right now, in partnership with the DoH, called the Trusted Research Environment. That will be the gateway to access these datasets in a controlled way, generate results, and those results will be used by academic partners and pharma companies. There’s a lot of excitement internationally from some leading pharma companies to partner and analyze these datasets.

The fact that we’re in the era of AI is also helping improve the sophistication of how we analyze these datasets as well — it’s an accelerant.

E: What are the main challenges facing this sector today?

DK: As an asset category, life sciences is very complex — it’s a long-term, capital-intensive investment, and you have to be in it for the long term. During Covid-19, there was a lot of money invested across the globe in life sciences innovation, and some of that confidence evaporated from the market afterward once people realized this is a bit more complicated than they thought.

What’s exciting is the convergence trend of AI helping drive discoveries and analysis of datasets. I think the future is bright, but it’s one of those areas that requires patience, along with specialist knowledge and specialist investors, to really see the benefits and bring exciting innovation to market. The UAE is a country that’s really backing itself — they see this convergence trend of AI and health, and they want to be a destination for advanced healthcare, recognized globally as such, while also really leaning into data and AI infrastructure. The UAE is probably the most ambitious country in the world right now in this domain.

E: Now onto your routine — what does a typical workday look like?

DK: As an early riser, I usually start my day at 8am. I go to a coffee shop, where I sit with my laptop and a coffee to try to get ahead of the day. I typically don’t start meetings until 9 or 9:30am, which gives me that crucial morning window to collect my thoughts.

My role is quite varied. I’m very lucky to have a very skilled management team that reports to me, and they manage different aspects of the business, so a lot of my diary is checking in with them, helping them do what they need to do or solve problems they’re facing. There’s no template for my day. Every day brings a unique and interesting problem that needs to be solved, and every week there are new challenges — and you just keep rolling through and tackling them as they come.

E: And in the evening — or however you disconnect — what do you do for fun?

DK: I have a three-year-old son, so my hobbies pretty much consist of playing with him and spending time with my wife. I also play guitar, have done so for many years. I love to just pick up the guitar and strum, and I enjoy reading books as well.

We do also have a farm in Ireland — my wife is from a rural part of Ireland, and we have a little farm and animals back there. When we’re back, we spend time just kicking back and enjoying the farm. It’s a nice relief from the intense focus of a technical business.

Kavanagh's favorites

What he’s reading: Science fiction, mostly — right now, the Culture series by Scottish writer Iain Banks. “The world is at this point where everybody’s trying to figure out what the future looks like. There’s a lot of uncertainty — what impact is AI going to have on the way we live? Science fiction, even though it’s fiction, imagines a future where humanity has advanced, and at least the good science fiction authors have this ability to help you think about our place in the universe,” Kavanagh says. He also recommends Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and the works of Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary.

Favorite piece of advice: From a VC he knew in Dublin, after something hadn’t gone their way: “Write it down now. Write down this moment. Write down why you think it went wrong and learn from it, and then move on. Don’t carry it, just move on,” he said. “People tend to hold on to things maybe for too long, and we live in an uncertain world, and business is uncertain, so you have to just keep pushing forward — take the lessons, and move on.”