I am an Associate Professor in the Discipline of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin and lead the Cognitive Systems Group. I am a member of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (https://www.tcd.ie/Neuroscience/) and of the Global Brain Health Institute (https://www.gbhi.org/).

​A major focus of my group is the investigation of the functional and structural development of the brain with particular focus at two time points: (a) newborns and (b) adolescence. My work combines neuroimaging, neuropsychology, behaviour and cognition  measures to advance our understanding of neurodevelopment and the impact that lesions (and disease) has on the brain. My work with the newborns in done in collaboration with colleagues in the Neonatal and Children’s Brain Consortium Ireland (https://nbci.ie/). The work in regards adolescence is conducted as a member of the IMAGEN Consortium (https://imagen-project.org/). The research work is not only to advance our understanding of neurodevelopment, but to develop neuroimaging based biomarkers for clinical applications. 

A second focus of my work is investigating the neural substrates of complex emotions. The project is developing stimuli for functional neuroimaging studies and as well as studies to investigate the neural representation of hatred. I am the coordinator of the EU funded (under the MSCA programme) of the NETHATE Consortium – see https://nethate-itn.eu/).

I have previously performed research investigating brain changes due to normal ageing (using functional and structural neuroimaging) and early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.