ENES

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.

Dr Sharleen O'Reilly

Project Coordinator

Sharleen is a Registered Dietitian and Assistant 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.

LinkedIn
Twitter
Email
+353 1 716 2157

Dr Faisal Zahoor

Research Project Manager

Faisal has recently joined UCD as Research Project Manager where he will be supporting the Project Coordinator and B2B team in managing the successful delivery of this project. Before joining UCD, he worked as Research Development Officer (RDO) at Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics at Dublin City University (DCU), considered to be the largest publicly funded research centre within the EU. At Insight-DCU, he provided research support on multi-institutional, cutting edge data analytics and interdisciplinary proposals for external research funding, such as H2020, US NIH or NSF and Welcome Trust UK. Previous roles include Research Project Manager at UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science and UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, and Research and Education Officer at the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc).

LinkedIn
Email
+353 89 4677598

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.

Twitter

Associate Professor Mary Codd

Statistician

Mary is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy & Sports Science. Mary graduated in medicine from UCD and teaches epidemiology, applied research methods and data management, biostatistics and computational methods at all levels from undergraduate through to post-doctoral students. Mary is the Director of the consultative group, UCD CSTAR, a recognised UCD Academic Centre for Support and Training in Analysis & Research. She is a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine in Ireland and of the Royal Statistical Society, UK. She has published over 250 scientific publications. Mary’s role in the project is to provide statistical oversight in the development of the Data Analysis Plan and statistical analysis in work package 6.

Dr Aisling Geraghty

Clinical Trials Manager

Aisling is a clinical health researcher with an undergraduate BSc degree in Human Nutrition and a PhD in Translational Medicine from University College Dublin. She has a keen interest in the area of maternal health and nutrition during pregnancy and how this impacts offspring and their health later in life. Aisling carried out her PhD doctoral studies on the ROLO study examining dietary intakes and health status of mothers during pregnancy and how this can impact offspring body composition into early childhood. She also investigated the epigenetic mechanisms driving these associations and the impact of modifiable factors like child physical activity and sedentary behaviour on child body composition. Aisling previously worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with UCD Perinatal Research Centre in the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin.

Twitter