Brendan Murphy is a Consultant Neonatologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital and Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College, Cork. He qualified from University College Dublin in 1989, and completed Higher Specialist Paediatric and subspecialist Neonatology training in Edinburgh UK in 2001 following his Fellowship in Neonatal –Perinatal Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. His MD Thesis awarded from University College Dublin in 2001 based on original work carried out under the mentorship of Prof J.J. Volpe in Harvard explored the use of quantitative MRI imaging techniques to examine post-haemorrhagic hydrocephalus in very low birthweight infants. Since returning initially to Edinburgh and subsequently to Cork as Consultant Neonatologist in 2002, he has continued to develop his research interests exploring how pathological processes in the neonatal period disturb the brain and its subsequent function by leading not only to tissue injury but also by disturbances of subsequent brain development.

As the Clinical Director of Neonatology he played a central role in commissioning the Clinical Department of Neonatology and development of the Cork Neonatal Research Centre at the newly opened Cork University Maternity Hospital in 2007.

He continues to be the Coordinator for the Republic of Ireland of the NICORE (Neonatal Intensive Care Outcomes Research & Evaluation) Ireland All Ireland Quality Improvement in Neonatology Project for auditing and benchmarking neonatal outcomes in Ireland both nationally and internationally.

He was the Clinical Lead in the Department of Neonatology at Cork University Maternity Hospital for the NEMO Trial funded by a European FP7 grant. This exploratory dose finding and pharmacokinetic multi-centre clinical trial is a collaborative trial between clinical centres in Ireland, UK, and Europe examining the use of Bumetanide as an adjunct therapy to Phenobarbitone for the treatment of NEonatal seizures using Medication Off-patent.