Advisory Board

Molly is a Professor of Health Psychology and Health Research Board Research Leader. Since January 2014 she has held a full-time research leadership role at the School of Psychology, where she directs the Health Behaviour Change Research Group. Within this group, she and her team apply behavioural science to the development and evaluation of complex interventions to promote healthy behaviour change within health services and to promote public health. All Molly's research is done within multidisciplinary teams. Currently, Molly's main research focuses are in: Diabetes and self-management; Cardiovascular disease and sexual health; Promotion of healthy infant feeding; Promotion of physical activity within pregnant women and others; Interventions targeting health professional behaviour change. Molly obtained an honours degree in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin (1994) and both a Masters degree in Health Psychology (1998) and a PhD (2003) from NUI Galway. Molly joined the School of Psychology in NUI Galway in July 2004 as Health Psychology Lecturer, where she has contributed to and directed the MSc in Health Psychology and Structured PhD in Psychology and Health.

Dr Patricia Clarke is the Co-Chair of the National Open Research Forum (with the Higher Education Authority), previously Chair of the National Committee for Open Access policy that delivered the National Open Access Principles, a Member of the EU Commission expert group on National Points of Reference on Scientific Information and a Member of the Science Europe Research Data Working Group.

She is a graduate from Queens University Belfast and the University of Birmingham UK where she completed her doctorate in health behaviour change and also holds an MSc in Computer Applications. She has a long standing interest in policy and research having previously worked in the NHS in London and with the Centre for Cross Border Studies, a UK-Ireland cross-border policy research centre. Currently she is the Programme Manager for Policy and for EU Funding at the Health Research Board and also National Delegate for EU Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing. Patricia is responsible for HRB Open Research.

Mr Tim Conlon leads the policy and strategic planning unit at the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Ireland's statutory planning and policy development body for higher education and research. He has previously led the system development & performance management unit concerned with the strategic development and public accountability of Ireland's higher education system. Tim graduated from the University of the Creative Arts (UK) and has an MBA from the Smurfit School of Business at UCD. Tim has worked at the HEA for almost twenty years, holding various posts at the national research council, in HEA research and infrastructure, in system development and in policy and planning. Tim has worked on strategic instruments designed to enhance national research output, improve ICT skills provision and to provide for labour market activation. He has carried out research on the nature of relationships between business, enterprise and academia and on research prioritisation. He has led or conducted quality reviews in broad areas from architecture education provision and international quality assurance through to reviews of arts and medical education provision as well as the allocation of degree awarding powers. Tim also oversaw the assessment process to create Ireland's first new technological university in 2018.

Declan is Professor of Midwifery at NUI Galway, Director of the Health Research Board - Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) and Principal Investigator with the SFI - INFANT - Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research. He is an Editor with the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Cochrane UK. Declan has a particular interest in the implementation and evaluation of models of maternity care and on methods of fetal monitoring including cardiotocography and intermittent auscultation. His methodological areas of expertise are randomised trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. He has published over 125 papers including numerous Cochrane systematic reviews predominantly in the field of fetal assessment. He has led a number of clinical trials recruiting from 100 to over 3000 participants and serves on a number of Trial Steering Committees including those in pregnancy (e.g., EMERGE, HOLDS, PARROT) and Data Monitoring Boards (e.g., CORD, KEEP-WELL). Declan was a Ministerial appointed member of the National Maternity Strategy Steering Group and of the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee (NCEC). He is inaugural Chair of the NCEC Clinical Guideline Methodology Subgroup. He is a member of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) Expert Network of Research Advisors; a former member of the Midwifery Committee of An Bord Altranais (now Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland) and a member of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre (NPEC) National Advisory Group.

Between 2014 and 2016, Declan was seconded part time to the maternity services of the Saolta University Health Care Group where he established and Chaired the development of a clinical care pathway group, which developed a suite of clinical care pathways for discrete groups of women accessing maternity services. He currently chairs the Saolta Midwifery Clinical Practice Forum.

Declan has been awarded over €4.5 million in research funding as PI or co-PI and a further €7 million as co-applicant. He holds or has held awards from the Health Research Board (Ireland), Department of Health and Children (Ireland), National Council for the Professional Development of Nursing and Midwifery (Ireland), Royal College of Midwives (UK), the Health Services Executive (Ireland) and the EU.

Maura is a qualified nurse (1982) and holds a BSc (Hons) in Microbiology and Biochemistry (1988) and a PhD (1994) in Molecular Diagnostics and Epizootology. She subsequently worked as a post-doctoral, managed a disease diagnostics service for the Irish fisheries industry and was Head of Research Support Services at NUI Galway from 2000-07. Currently she is Head of Post-Award and Evaluation at the Health Research Board, Ireland. The Unit supports the ongoing management and ex-post evaluation of HRB-funded research, provides a policy development function and hosts the National Delegate and National Contact Points for Horizon 2020 and the National Focal Point for the EU Public Health Programme. Maura has a particular interest in integrity in research and is a member of the ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Science and Ethics where she coordinated a revision of the European Code of Conduct. Nationally, she is a member of the National Forum on RI and one of the authors of the Irish National Policy on RI.

Dr John B. Howard is University Librarian and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at University College Dublin (UCD). Since July 2012 he has served as Head of the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA), and from 2016 has acted as National Coordinator for the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium. He holds a concurrent position as Adjunct Professor of Informatics in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. In previous positions at Harvard University he served as Associate Director for Informatics and Technology Research at Harvard Medical School, and at Harvard College served as Senior Lecturer in Music, Librarian for Information Technology, Director of Digital Library Initiatives, Richard F. French Music Librarian, and Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library. He has also held positions at Arizona State University of Associate Dean of Libraries and Affiliate Professor of Computing and Informatics.

As a researcher Dr Howard has undertaken sponsored research in archaeology, anthropology, history and philosophy of science, and music. He has served as PI or Co-PI on awards from the European Commission, the Irish Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Hewlett Packard Corporation, the Laura Boulton Foundation, and other funders. He has served on the boards of several organisations that support scholarship in the humanities, including Digital Antiquity, the Laura Boulton Foundation, the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), and Stanford's Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities.

Dr Howard has worked extensively in the design and implementation of information and knowledge management systems, including digital repositories. He serves on the Board of the CoreTrustSeal, an international organisation that evaluates and certifies the trusted status of digital repository services. At UCD he has overseen the design and implementation of the UCD Digital Library (successor to the PRTLI-funded Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive), Ireland's largest preservation-oriented digital repository, and has been the architect of ISSDA's data preservation archive. At Arizona State University he has been active in several digital repository projects, including Digital Antiquity (a repository for North American archaeology), the ASU Knowledge Network, and the Embryo Project. At Harvard Medical School he oversaw the research computing function, led efforts to establish the School's Computational Biology Initiative and related data processing services, and oversaw design and implementation of the Harvard Medical School Digital Library. At Harvard College he served on teams to design and implement the Harvard Geospatial Library, the Harvard Digital Repository and associated services, the Biological Image Library, and RISM Online (a database of historic primary resource materials in music).

Aoife is a National Health Service Librarian in Ireland. Professional interests include: Library and Information Services, Library management systems, Repository management, Digital Libraries, Open Access Publishing, Continuing professional development for healthcare professionals, information literacy.

Ms Gillian Markey is currently Head of Communications at the Health Research Board. She has overall responsibility for Communication strategy, stakeholder engagement and media relations. Gillian is a graduate of Queens University Belfast, and also holds Diplomas in Public Relations and Digital Marketing.

She previously led communications at St James's Hospital Dublin and in the Marine Institute.

Mary McCarron, PhD RNID, RGN, BNS. F.T.C.D is Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, and Professor of Ageing and Intellectual Disability at Trinity College Dublin. Since joining Trinity College in 2002 Professor McCarron has held many senior leadership roles including, Director of Research and Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery which is now one of the largest Schools in the University and ranked 36th in the World 2017. In 2011 Professor McCarron was elected Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, with responsibility for the School of Nursing and Midwifery, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Dental Sciences, and Medicine, with a student body in excess of 4,000 and a staff of 650 and she is a member of the Senior Executive Management team of the University. A leader in multidisciplinary health sciences, Professor McCarron is a committed ageing research leader at Trinity College and an international expert in the fields of intellectual disability, ageing, dementia, and palliative care. Professor McCarron is the Director of the Trinity Centre on Ageing and Intellectual Disability and is the founder and Principal Investigator for the first ever longitudinal comparative study on Ageing in Persons with Intellectual Disability (IDS-TILDA) to be conducted in Ireland or internationally. This study is a supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). With its nationally representative sample, huge support from people with ID, their families and providers, and opportunities for comparisons with the general population, IDS-TILDA increases understanding of how lives and chronic conditions change over time and provides insights on key issues at end of life. Professor McCarron's innovative and inclusive approaches are internationally recognized as an exemplar for ensuring meaningful involvement of persons with disability in the research process and she now, with funding from the Health Research Board, leads efforts within Trinity College Dublin to ensure that exemplary public-patient involvement (PPI) is a hallmark of research. With extensive experience in working in the area of dementia in people with Down syndrome Professor McCarron has led large longitudinal cohort studies spanning over 25 years. Her special interest is on the early detection and presentation of dementia, and in the development of humane approaches to care and support. Her award winning approaches on environmental design and technology innovations are sustaining and improving quality of life for people across the continuum of dementia. She has been a key advisor of ageing and policy issues to various governmental and other groups at a National and International level. The emerging IDS-TILDA data is already informing needed policy responses to develop humane and appropriate services for this increasingly at risk group. Her work is widely published.

Alistair is the Chair of Critical Care Medicine in University College Dublin, the current Chair of the Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Group, the Director of the Health Research Board Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Network methodology centre in Dublin, Ireland and an intensivist/anaesthetist in St Vincents University Hospital in Dublin. He has a particularly long commute as he also a Professor in the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre, Monash University and an intensivist in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.

Dr David O'Connell graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry from University College Dublin and University of Calgary in 1995. Following a period of postdoctoral research, as a Wellcome Trust Fellow, at Trinity College Dublin and Texas A&M University, David moved into the world of scientific publishing following his appointment as Chief Editor of the Cell Press/Elsevier review journal, Trends in Microbiology. Subsequently, he was appointed Managing Editor of the Trends family of journals.

In 2002, David moved to the Nature Publishing Group to launch and become the first Chief Editor of Nature Microbiology, the world leading scientific publication in the disciplines of microbiology and infectious diseases.

In 2009, David joined the Office of the Vice President for Research & Innovation at University College Cork (UCC) with a remit to enable research activity, and enhance its quality and impact, through the delivery of an effective research support function. Currently, he holds the post of Director and leads the Research Support Service at UCC.

Mairéad O'Driscoll is the Director of Research Strategy and Funding at the HRB and currently the Interim CEO. Before being appointed Director of Funding, she was Head of Policy, Evaluation and External Relations. She worked as a researcher in academia and the biotechnology industry before moving into policy research, first with the Royal Society in London and then with the Wellcome Trust. She also spent time in South Africa where she worked on the development of a national research and technology foresight study. She is a member of several national and international groups including the Oversight Group for the National Health Innovation Hub in Ireland, Enterprise Ireland's Industrial Research and Commercialisation Committee, and the European Research Infrastructure Working Group for Food and Health. She also chairs the Executive Committee of IC-PerMed, the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of London.

Professor Sheils has a PhD in Molecular Pathology from Trinity College Dublin and a MA in Medical Law and Ethics from Kings College London. She is a leader in multidisciplinary molecular pathology, who has championed a niche area facilitating interaction between basic science, translational research, clinical service provision and biotechnology. She has a particular interest in developing novel molecular diagnostics, and she works closely with industry bringing novel technologies and applications to the translational research setting. Her research strategy is to improve human health and wellbeing through translational research, and it is predicated on clinical, patient centred, laboratory-based and health service research informed by real world clinical bedside problems, and societal and global health challenges.

She is a member of the Tallaght/St James's Joint Research Ethics Committee and was Chair of TCD's Research Ethics Policy Committee (REPC) from 2012-2019 having chaired the Faculty of Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee (REC) for the previous 7 years.

In 2016 Professor Sheils was appointed as founding Director of the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute - an exclusively health sciences - focused educational and research institution, embedded within the acute hospital setting. She is an active Principal Investigator within TTMI.

She became Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2019.

Dr Elaine Toomey is a Lecturer in the School of Allied Health in the University of Limerick. She is a Cochrane Ireland Research Associate and a member of the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (National University of Ireland Galway). Elaine is a Chartered Physiotherapist and obtained her PhD from University College Dublin (2016) and her MSc (2012) and BSc (2010) from the University of Limerick. She was Associate Director of Cochrane Ireland within Evidence Synthesis Ireland from 2019-2020 and led the implementation of the Evidence Synthesis Ireland Fellowship Scheme. Elaine was a Health Research Board (HRB) Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement post-doctoral research fellow from 2016-2019, where she co-led the development of a complex intervention to enhance infant feeding practices with a goal of improving childhood obesity outcomes, with a specific focus on process and implementation outcomes. Elaine's research primarily focuses on methods used in the development, evaluation and implementation of health behaviour change interventions, particularly in relation to chronic disease prevention and management. She has specific expertise in evidence synthesis, implementation science/knowledge translation, process evaluation and exploring the fidelity/adaptation of behaviour change interventions. In 2016 Elaine was awarded a Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science for Emerging Researchers from the University of California Berkeley for her work in fidelity and transparency of behaviour change interventions. Stemming from this, she is also a Catalyst for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) and a keen advocate for open science.