Professor Eugene Dempsey is a Consultant Neonatologist in the Cork University Maternity Hospital and Clinical Professor of Paediatrics in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Cork. He qualified from University College Cork in 1995, trained in the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, National Maternity Hospital Holles Street and Our Lady’s Hospital Crumlin before moving to McGill University, Montreal where he completed subspeciality training in Neonatology at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Montreal Children’s Hospital, McGill University (2002-2005).
Gene is the coordinator of the EU FP7 funded HIP trial (http://www.hip-trial.com). He is also the Irish lead for the SafeboosC trial in neonates (SafeboosC).

Eugene's full IRIS profile is here:
http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/C005/gdempsey

Niamh is a Molecular Medicine Ireland Clinical and Translational Research Scholar, with a BSc (Hons) in Chemical and Pharmaceutical science from Dublin City University, 2011. She is currently undertaking a PhD funded by Molecular Medicine Ireland within the Neonatal Brain Research Group, Cork University Maternity Hospital to identify and validate umbilical crd blood Biomarkers in Hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy.

Previous and ongoing work in the NRBG (The BiHivE study) has identified potential biochemical markers in umbilical cord blood which can accurately identify infants who will progress to moderate/severe encephalopathy. Niamh’s work will use a combination of metabolomics and proteomics to validate the biochemical markers in a further cohort of infants. She aims to establish the quantitative changes in biochemical markers with the best potential for development into a clinically useful bedside predictive test.

Email: 111224166@umail.ucc.ie

Dr Peter Filan MB BCh BAO, MD, DCH, MRCPI

Dr Peter Filan is a Consultant Neonatologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital.  He qualified from University College Dublin in 1994 and initially trained at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles St., Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and the Children’s University Hospital, Temple St. In 2000 Peter moved to London to commence Higher Specialist Registrar training in Paediatrics at the South Thames London Deanery and in 2004 completed sub speciality training in Neonatology. There under the mentorship of Dr Janet Rennie he developed his interest in neonatal neurology. In 2004 he commenced a neonatal fellowship at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne and undertook an MD thesis (awarded by UCD, 2008) supervised by Prof Terrie Inder. The thesis, based on advanced neonatal magnetic resonance imaging techniques, investigated the influence of surgery on the immature infant brain. Current interests include the developing infant brain, neonatal neuroimaging and EEG. 

Email: Peter.Filan@hse.ie 

Robert Goulding holds a BSc(Hons) Clinical Neurophysiology and is a qualified Specialist Clinical Physiologist (Neurophysiology). Robert previously worked within the Clinical Neurophysiology Department at University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff and is currently undertaking a PhD (Paediatric and Child Health) with the Neonatal Brain Research Group, Cork University Maternity Hospital as part of the NEOPRISM project. The overall objective of this project is to develop an automated neonatal EEG classification algorithm, based on advanced feature extraction and machine learning techniques that could be used for constant surveillance of the neonatal EEG in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Robert also aims to combine the automated assessment of neonatal EEG abnormality, seizure activity, and other physiological markers to produce an overall index of neonatal brain health.

E: r.goulding@ucc.ie

Dr Liudmila Kharoshankaya is the ANSeR Clinical Trial Research Fellow at the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Cork.

In 2001 Liudmila qualified from Vitebsk State Medical University, Belarus, where she specialised in Neonatology and Paediatrics. She completed her Clinical Residency at the State Medical Academy of Post- Graduate Education, Minsk Belarus in 2010, and has 9 years of clinical experience.

Her current research interest is evolution of EEG characteristics during the first 72 hour after birth in infants with Hypoxic- Ischaemic Encephalopathy treated with controlled hypothermia and correlation of EEG changes with neurodevelopmental outcome at the age of 24 months.

Dr Irina Korotchikova is a former member of the NBRG.
Dr Irina Korotchikova, MB, BCh, BAO  research interests is the EEG of the newborn baby in the early post natal period. There is very little data available on the neonatal EEG in hypoxia-ischaemia early in the newborn period i.e. between 0-12 hours of birth and virtually nothing is known about the EEG of the normal neonate during this time period. 
The influence of factors such as labour, delivery method and maternal anaesthesia has not been studied early in this time period. This information is essential before we can accurately identify the severity of hypoxia ischaemia early in the newborn period, provide accurate prognosis in this period and correctly identify those babies that will benefit most from neuroprotective therapies.
Her PhD was completed in 2011 and its aims were:
·        To establish normal EEG and sleep patterns in the immediate post-natal period in healthy full term neonates.
·        To determine the effects of labour, delivery method and maternal anaesthesia on these early EEG and sleep patterns. 
·        To compare these patterns to the early EEG patterns of babies with hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy. 

Her PhD was supervised by Prof Geraldine Boylan and Prof CA Ryan, and ran in collaboration with the Department of Electrical Engineering, UCC and Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin.

Rhodri Lloyd is undertaking a PhD within the Neonatal Brain Research Group at Cork University Maternity Hospital. He is a Clinical Physiologist (Neurophysiology) from Cardiff, where he was employed within the Clinical Neurophysiology Department at The University Hospital of Wales. He previously gained a BSc Neuroscience degree at Cardiff University, before achieving a BSc Clinical Physiology degree at The City of Westminster College, Middlesex University.

 Rhodri works within the research group to help gain further knowledge of the neonatal brain and it’s EEG, whilst providing observation of on-going EEG recordings within the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). 

His particular project concentrates more specifically on the research of the electrophysiological brain function of pre-term neonates and their potential seizure activities.

Ann Marie Looney is a HRB funded PhD student working within the Neonatal Brain Research Group, Cork University Maternity Hospital. She graduated with a BSc (Hons) Neuroscience, University College Cork in 2009 and was awarded her Master of Science in 2012 for a joint project between the Department of Paediatric and Child Health and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology through the Anu Research Centre, Cork University Maternity Hospital.  Focusing on Neonatal Asphyxia and Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy, this project examined the feasibility of using placental biopsies to obtain a potential biomarker for the condition.

 Ann Marie is currently working in the area of detection and validation of potential cord blood Biomarkers for Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy, through the BiHIvE 2 project. Her PhD has a specific focus on the miRNA profile of cord blood from the asphyxiated neonate.

Email: am.looney@ucc.ie

Dr Evonne Low:  Former Wellcome Trust PhD Clinical Research Fellow

Evonne Low is a former member of the NBRG where her research work involved EEG in both the term and preterm.

Research Interests
The definite diagnosis of seizures in preterm and full term infants is critically dependent on expert interpretation of the full standard EEG.  However, this service may not be pragmatically available around the clock.  It is necessary to have an effective and a robust system to detect seizures with precision and as rapidly as possible following application of the full standard EEG, to enable clinicians to instigate the appropriate intervention for the newborn. 

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.

Dr Deirdre Murray's research strategy is to promote high quality paediatric research in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. To do this, with the support of Prof Jonathan Hourihane, we have formed a collaborative research team which has recently received funding to establish the first Irish birth cohort and first neonatal biobank, the BASELINE study. This birth cohort will gather detailed information from 3000 Irish children as they grow and develop over several decades, with a large biobank of stored umbilical cord blood. Deirdre has recently been awarded a prestiguous HRB Clinician Scientist Award to validate biomarkers in hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy through the BiHIVE study.

Deirdre's full IRIS profile is here:

http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/C005/dmurray

Email:d.murray@ucc.ie

Jackie O’Leary is a qualified general nurse since 1988 and commenced working as a clinical research nurse in a privately owned company, Shandon Clinical Trials Ltd in 1990. Shandon CT operated as a clinical research centre and its services included protocol and case record form development, IRB and Irish Medicines Board (IMB) submissions, recruitment and screening, clinical phase, data management and statistical analysis, and clinical report writing services. The company also provided subjects for pharmacokinetic studies, including relative bioavailability of established and experimental formulations, single and multiple-dose kinetic studies, food-effect kinetic studies, selected interaction studies, pharmacokinetic analyses of pilot and development batches of medicines, immediate and modified release formulations, kinetics in slow and fast metabolisers, and OTC and prescription-only drugs, as well as bioequivalence testing. Initially Ms O’Leary was employed as a Clinical Trials Nurse/Manager and spent 5/6 years in this position before moving to the role of Study Monitor. In 2000 the position of Quality Control Manager became vacant and she assumed this role for the company. During her time as Quality Control Manager she gained a lot of experience in the conducting and execution of clinical trials as every aspect of a clinical trial from protocol writing to final study report writing including statistics was quality controlled.

Ms O’Leary updated her training on a regular basis during her time with Shandon Clinical Trials with various GCP and Auditing courses. She also completed a Diploma in Quality Management in 2006, first class honours BBUS degree in Business from Cork Institute of Technology in 2012 and recently received a Masters in Clinical Trials with honours from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2014. Ms O’Leary was the NEMO Clinical Trial Monitor and is currently the ANSeR Clinical Trial Monitor.



Email: jackie.oleary@ucc.ie

Catherine O’Connor is a clinical psychologist, and is currently a part-time PhD student with the Neonatal Brain Research Group and the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, UCC, under the supervision of Dr. Deirdre Murray and Prof. Geraldine Boylan. Her research is focused on the long-term follow up of children who experienced hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy in the neonatal period. Her interest developed from working for many years at Enable Ireland services in Cork which provides multidisciplinary services to children and adolescents with a physical/neurological disability and to their families/carers. Her role concentrated on supporting each child’s unique learning and other strengths and needs in home and school settings. She has also worked closely with siblings using the ‘sibshops’ model.

Email: catherineoconnor@ucc.ie

Marc O’Sullivan is a NCRC funded PhD student working with the Neonatal Brain Research Group in Cork University Maternity Hospital. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Neuroscience from University College Cork (2014). Marc has previously worked on core temperature variability in Hypoxic-Ischemic neonates with seizure burden, and is now focused on “Biomarkers for neonatal growth and brain development”. His phD has a specific focus on the microRNA profile of cord blood from the asphyxiated neonate, he is also looking at early rapid weight gain in newborns more susceptible to later life obesity.

Niamh Geaney qualified as a Registered General Nurse in the UK in 1990.  She worked in a large London hospital for 10 years before returning to Cork where she worked in the Intensive Care Unit in the Mercy University Hospital.  In 2003 she began working in working in a privately owned Clinical Research Organisation, Shandon Clinical Trials Ltd.  There, she worked as a Clinical Research Nurse initially before moving to the role of Study Monitor. During her time as Study Monitor, she gained a great deal of experience in the conducting, execution and reporting of clinical trials.  

 After leaving Shandon Clinical Trials, she then worked as a Pharmacovigilance Officer in SMPC Ltd, a company providing contract Pharmacovigilance services to the Pharmaceutical Industry. She also worked as a Clinical Research Manager for Atlantia Food Clinical Trials Ltd., an independent Clinical Research Organisation specialising in clinical trials in the area of food for health.  Ms Geaney joined the Neonatal Brain Research Group, (part of The INFANT Centre), Cork University Maternity Hospital in September 2013 as Study Monitor for the HIP Study. The HIP Trial is an EU FP7 funded project and is the largest multi centred European study in Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborns (ELGANs).

Email: ngeaney@ucc.ie

Caroline Ahearne is the BiHIVE (Validation of Biomarkers in Hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy) Study Research Fellow and is undertaking a PhD with the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health in University College Cork.

Caroline graduated with a degree in Medicine (MB BCh BAO) from University College Dublin in 2010. She then completed postgraduate basic specialist training in Paediatrics with the Royal College of Physicians Ireland. Following 3 years of clinical experience, Caroline joined the BiHIVE Study where her research interests are the assessment of neurodevelopmental outcome in children following perinatal asphyxia, correlation of outcome with perinatal biomarkers and the development of new tools to assess cognitive development in children. 

Gavin Hawkes is a final year PhD candidate in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. Having completed an undergraduate degree in Social Sciences from University College Cork in 2011 he then completed training as an Emergency Medical Technician, prior to beginning his PhD in 2012.

The primary aim of his PhD is to investigate the role of enhanced monitoring, in the form of electrocardiography and capnography, during resuscitation of preterm infants in the delivery room. Secondary aims of his PhD relate to various areas of neonatal resuscitation training. Professor Eugene Dempsey and Professor Anthony Ryan supervise his PhD.

Taragh Keily is the Project and Quality Manager for the Wellcome Trust ANSeR Project “Clinical Evaluation of Neonatal Seizure Detection Algorithm”. Graduated from the University of Ulster with a BSc (Hons) Human Nutrition and subsequently worked in the private sector for 13 years before joining the ANSeR Project in 2013.

Ita Herlihy is a Clinical Research Nurse who joined the team at the Clinical Research Facility (CRF) in February 2012. She has amassed 10 years’ experience working within Clinical Trials. Ita is currently working with Professorr.Eugene Dempsey, Consultant Neonatologist, Cork University Maternity Hospital on two projects. The HIP Trial is an EU FP7 funded project and is the largest multi cantered European study in Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborns (ELGANs), it is a Phase III Clinical Trial entitled ‘HIP - Management of Hypotension In the Preterm’. This trial is currently enrolling. The SafeboosC trial (Safeguarding the brain of our smallest children) SafeboosC is now in the follow up phase having recruited 21 infants in Cork born less than 28 weeks gestational age to monitor cerebral oxygen levels using Near Infrared Spectroscopy. It is an investigator-initiated randomised, blinded, multinational, phase II feasibility clinical trial. She has also been responsible for  recruitment for the RSV study.  RSV is an observational study of the risk factors for RSV hospitalisation in a cohort of infants born between 32 and 36 weeks and 6 days gestational age. Ita recruited a total of 211 subjects onto this study over a 9 month period.).Ita is also a member of the Neonatal Brain Research Group based in the Cork University Maternity Hospital University for the past 3 years.

Conal Wrigley holds a BA (Hons) in Applied Psychology and is currently undertaking an MA Applied Psychology degree in the University College of Cork.

Conal has worked on previous NBRG projects, in particular the development of a European survey to identify treatment practices of neonatal seizures by neonatologists and paediatric neurologists (NEMO Survey), the BRANE-Child project (Brain Research After Neonatal Encephalopathy) and database development for the Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT).

As part of his dissertation, Conal is investigating the application of a digitalised touchscreen-based measurement of executive functioning in toddlers under the supervision of Dr Deirdre Murray. This project aims to investigate working memory deficits in toddlers. The INFANTapp will be compared to previously standardised tests and tasks of executive functioning to investigate the validity of the application in a non-clinical population.

Email: c.wrigley@ucc.ie