Dr Fitzpatrick completed his BSc in University College Dublin (UCD) in 2011 graduating with first class honours. He remained there for his PhD under the supervision of Dr Grace Morgan working on “Modulation of the Magnetic Anisotropy and the Jahn-Teller Distortion in Manganese(III)”. He finished his PhD in 2015 and stayed as a PDRA until the end of 2016. ​He joined Nottingham Trent University as a lecturer in January 2017 teaching inorganic chemistry to undergraduate and postgraduate students until August 2020. He then took up a post as lecturer of inorganic chemistry at Sheffield Hallam University in September 2020 before returning to NTU as a senior lecturer in November 2021.