University College Dublin

University College Dublin (Irish: Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest university.

UCD originates in a body founded in 1854, which opened as the Catholic University of Ireland on the feast of St. Malachy with John Henry Newman as its first rector; it re-formed in 1880 and chartered in its own right in 1908. The Universities Act, 1997 renamed the constituent university as the "National University of Ireland, Dublin", and a ministerial order of 1998 renamed the institution as "University College Dublin – National University of Ireland, Dublin".

Originally located at St Stephen's Green and Earlsfort terrace in Dublin's city centre, all faculties later relocated to a 133-hectare (330-acre) campus at Belfield, six kilometres to the south of the city centre. In 1991, it purchased a second site in Blackrock, which currently houses the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. A report published in May 2015 asserted that the economic output generated by UCD and its students in Ireland amounted to €1.3 billion annually.

Notable alumni and faculty of UCD include five Nobel laureates, four Taoisigh of Ireland, three Irish Presidents, and one President of India. The university has produced 32 Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, 29 Rhodes Scholars, 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 3 Pritzker Prize recipients. Additionally, UCD is associated with writers such as James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins; physicist Dennis Jennings; Golden Globe Award recipients Carroll O'Connor and Gabriel Byrne; Academy Award winner Neil Jordan; one of the co-developers of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine Teresa Lambe; and many CEOs, including those of Unilever, Aer Lingus, Mediahuis Ireland, Chevron Corporation, and BP.