After post-doctoral positions in
Bologna,
Italy, and
Nijmegen,
Netherlands, he became a lecturer at Trinity in 1995 and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1998. With colleagues from medicine and dentistry, he established the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering in 2002, His work has won funding from
Science Foundation Ireland, often as Principal Investigator, as well as from the EU and some industry sources.
Provostship In 2011, he was elected as the 44th Provost of Trinity College, for a ten-year term. For external purposes, the post is elaborated to
Provost and President. During his term, Prendergast has focused on the university's rankings from QS, the Times HES and Shanghai, and on increasing sources of funding. In 2016 a "Provost's Council" was formed to advise how Trinity College Dublin might finance new projects and initiatives. Prendergast also negotiated Trinity's entry into the prestigious
League of European Research Universities (LERU), the first and only university on the island of Ireland to become a member. In May 2018, Prendergast unveiled plans for a new institute in Engineering, Environment and Emerging Technologies (E3), funded by an Irish philanthropic donation and Government funding, and the E3 Learning Foundry is now under construction in the university. The renovation of the magnificent Old Library of Trinity College, with a €25m contribution announced by government Minister Darragh O’Brien of Fianna Fail, is also going ahead. A more controversial project to develop a new Trinity East campus with the Grand Canal Innovation District broke ground after the end of Prendergast's term in 2023 under the name "Portal." In April 2019, Prendergast gave a wide-ranging interview to the music magazine Hot Press. He was involved in several controversies, most notably over branding and "Take Back Trinity", a student movement to resist commercialisation within the university. During his tenure he wrote a many articles for the
Irish Times on Higher Education espousing views on how Irish higher education should develop, one of which proposed a Cabinet Minister and associated Department for Higher Education. The students’ final assessment of Prendergast was probably a good summary: “His trademark lack of regard for the on-the-ground effects of his decisions had a certain nobility to it. One may disagree with them, but at least there was no pretence of consensus building”. ==Chairperson and Board memberships==