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University College Dublin

Coordinator - Irelandwww.ucd.ie

University College Dublin (UCD) [also known as the National University of Ireland, Dublin] is Ireland’s premier university, with around 26,000 students and a research budget of approximately €100 million per annum. The university is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide and has a strong international profile in research and innovation. It has 10 faculties spanning the full academic spectrum, from arts and humanities, to science, technology, medicine and agri-food. Health is one of UCD’s major research themes.

The programme of work is led by staff from the School of Agriculture and Food Science, the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science. UCD School of Medicine is one of the largest medical schools in Ireland and has a considerable clinical research portfolio. Clinical research is supported by the longest established Irish UCD Clinical Research Centre.

UCD is the Project Coordinator and the leader of work packages 6, 7 and 9. It will contribute to all other work packages, including coordinating all work at the National Maternity Hospital and delivering the intervention in Ireland.

Associate Professor Sharleen O'Reilly

Project Coordinator

Sharleen is a Registered Dietitian and Associate Professor of Nutrition and Food Science at the School of Agriculture and Food Science in UCD. Sharleen works at the interface of research, teaching and practice in public health nutrition. In 2019 she was awarded ‘Research Dietitian of the Year’ by the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute. She worked as a dietitian in Ireland and the UK before moving to Australia where she was a Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. During that time, she held two prestigious Australian National Fellowships and Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian status. Sharleen is an active member of the UCD Institute of Food and Health and UCD Perinatal Research Centre. She is an investigator on over €7M active research funding at present. Sharleen is Bump2Baby and Me Project Coordinator, responsible for leading the consortium and ensuring the successful delivery of the project.

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Dr Janine Wirth

Research Project Manager

Janine is a nutritionist and epidemiologist and has recently joined UCD’s Bump2Baby and Me team as Research Project Manager where she will be supporting the Project Coordinator and the consortium in managing the successful delivery of this project. Before joining the group, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Biomarkers & Health Research Group in the UCD Conway Institute on a Career-Fit Fellowship (co-funded by the European Union and Enterprise Ireland). During this time, she conducted her own nutritional intervention study and was also seconded to the industrial partner Kerry Group. Therefore, she was involved in all steps of the intervention from product development (high protein shakes), Ethics, SOP/planning, advertisement, recruitment, study visits and statistical analysis.

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Professor Fionnuala McAuliffe

Clinical Lead

Fionnuala is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at National Maternity Hospital Dublin. She is Head of Women’s and Child’s Health at UCD and Director of the UCD Perinatal Research Centre. Fionnuala is the principal investigator on many clinical randomised intervention trials in pregnancy to improve maternal and infant health. Fionnuala has supervised 18 PhD/MDs to completion and her current research group includes 2 postdocs, 2 research assistants, a research midwife and 5 PhD/MD students. She has received significant grant funding both nationally and internationally (circa €25 million as coPI/PI) and has circa 300 peer reviewed publications. She is an executive council member of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and is a member of the Pregnancy Non-Communicable Diseases Committee and co-lead of the FIGO pregnancy obesity and nutrition initiative. Fionnuala is running the clinical site of the Bump2Baby and Me research programme in Dublin and is the local lead in Ireland for work package 5.

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