Professor Paramala Santosh is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, and a Professor in Developmental Neuropsychiatry and Psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neurosciences (IoPPN), King’s College London. He developed and heads the national and specialist Centre for Interventional Paediatric Psychopharmacology and Rare Diseases (CIPPRD), and the CIPP Rett Centre. The CIPP Rett Centre is the world’s first centre for personalised medicine in Rett Syndrome that focuses on developing digital health strategies to monitor and manage patients whilst conducting translational research using the HealthTrackerTM platform, providing holistic specialist care, and conducting clinical trials.
Professor Santosh also co-developed the GDPR compliant HealthTrackerTM platform for remote screening, patient reported outcome monitoring, and structured medication review and is the CEO of the SME HealthTracker Ltd.
Professor Santosh is an internationally recognised expert in ADHD, ASD, paediatric psychopharmacology, treatment-resistant developmental multimorbidity, and neuropsychiatric problems in acquired brain injury, childhood dementias, and rare diseases such as Rett syndrome, Septo-Optic Dysplasia, Mucopolysaccharidoses, and paediatric neurodegeneration. His research focusses on translational personalised medicine approaches using remote digital health monitoring, structured pharmacological approaches, sensor-based psychophysiological monitoring, and machine learning.
Dr. Cliódhna O'Connor is a social psychologist and Assistant Professor in the UCD School of Psychology. Her research investigates how people engage with scientific information and the implications this has for social attitudes, self-concept, and common-sense beliefs. She is particularly interested in how scientific and clinical classifications influence social identity and intergroup relations, and has explored these links in a range of social contexts including gender stereotypes and psychiatric diagnosis. She currently holds a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2017-2019), which supports a mixed-methods research programme exploring the phenomenon of diagnostic transitions in youth mental healthcare.
Prior to joining UCD, she was a Lecturer in the Maynooth University Department of Psychology. Her postdoctoral research was completed in the Lucena Clinic and University College London, where she was Co-Investigator on the project 'The Brain in the Public Sphere', funded by the Faraday Institute at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. She has held visiting positions in Princeton University Department of Psychology and UCD School of Medicine. She holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin (BA [Hons.] in Psychology), the London School of Economics & Political Science (MSc in Social & Cultural Psychology) and University College London (PhD in Social Psychology).
Michelle Downes is currently collaborating on a project with Fiona McNicholas that is funded by the Waterloo Foundation and aims to look at the relation between sleep and family factors with attention development in young children at a higher risk of developing ADHD. The project invites families into the UCD Babylab and involves eye tracking, behavioural, and actigraphy measures.
More information on our work
Special Lecturer/Clinical Tutor in Psychiatry, UCD School of Medicine
Senior Registrar Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, CHI at Crumlin, Dublin
Dr Maunder’s clinical and research interests lie in the early recognition and treatment of eating disorders amongst children and adolescents. As well, addressing the burden caring for a child with an eating disorder can have on parents. Dr. Maunder is an active teacher and acted as a Clinical Tutor at Trinity College Dublin prior to her appointment at University College Dublin.
Dr Maunder attended medical school and completed her basic specialist training in Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin. Prior to this, she completed a Masters Degree in Medical Science (MSc.) through the University of Toronto where her research involved investigating supportive care needs of parents of children with cancer. She also has a Bachelor of Health Sciences with a Major in Psychology (BHSc.) degree from Western University.
Dr Maunder was awarded the prestigious Joseph Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship $17,500 alongside over $6000 in grants for her previous research at the University of Toronto. More recently, she was awarded the Greg Swanick Medal – CpsychI Clinical Examination prize after achieving the highest grade in the 2019 BST Psychiatry Clinical Examination.
Dr Maunder has published on various topics related to children’s mental health and carer burden. Her current research interests lie in exploring the link between inflammation, the gut microbiome and eating disorders.
Elisha graduated from National University of Ireland Galway with a BA joint honours degree in Psychology and Philosophy. She graduated from University of Limerick with a Master’s in Psychology (MA).
Elisha has been working as a researcher for University College Dublin from 2019 to present. She has worked on various research projects primarily surrounding occupational stress and the effects of such on mental health and wellbeing. More recently she has focused on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on essential workers and how it has impacted on their wellbeing.
Elisha has published research pertaining to Covid-19 and mental health as well as Covid-19 and its affects on essential workers during the pandemic.
.jpg)
Dr Shane O’Donnell received a PhD in sociology from University College Dublin in 2014. His research focuses broadly on health inequalities, the psychosocial aspects of living with chronic disease and patient activism. In 2018, he secured an EU-H2020 grant for a research project entitled ‘Outcomes of Patients’ Evidence with Novel, Do-It-Yourself Artificial Pancreas Technology [OPEN]’. OPEN (2019-2022) investigates the clinical and quality of life outcomes of do-it-yourself artificial pancreas technology (DIYAPS), at the same time assessing the challenges and implications pertaining to its wider diffusion.
More recently Shane was awarded the Aoife Galvin / AIB Newman Fellow in Frontline & Adolescent Mental Health in conjunction with PIs Dr Blánaid Gavin and Prof Fiona McNicholas.
Shane will use his Fellowship to document the psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 on healthcare workers. The project will utilise a suite of participatory, co-creation methods to develop a toolkit aimed at helping individuals cope with both the short and longer-term psychological consequences of delivering healthcare during a pandemic.
Research Assistant, UCD School of Medicine and Children's Health Ireland (CHI) at Crumlin
Rachael was a research assistant at the UCD School of Medicine and Children's Health Ireland (CHI) from 2018-2019. During this time, she worked on a number of national and international research projects, including the EU funded MILESTONE study and UCD’s evaluation of the PiLaR programme, which forms part of the Irish National Clinical Programme for Eating Disorders. More recently, she has conducted her own research on the prevalence of thiamine deficiency in anorexia nervosa.
Rachael graduated with a BA honours degree in psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder and a MSc with Distinction in Nutrition and Behaviour from Bournemouth University. She also holds a number of professional certifications in Motivational Interviewing (MI), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
She is currently working as an AfN Registered Associate Nutritionist specializing in intuitive eating and behaviour change.
ADHD Ireland's mission is to make life better for all people affected by ADHD, by raising awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the condition, providing practical services, and by creating a support network of paid staff and volunteers to underpin these activities.
ADHD Ireland envisages a future where all individuals affected by ADHD are included, supported, and empowered in all contexts of their lives (e.g. school, work, home, and socially) to participate fully within, benefit from, and contribute meaningfully to Irish society. ADHD Ireland is the national organisation that will enable this.
We value our collaboration with Irish research institutes and have worked closely with many research projects around awareness, recruitment, and communication. This has also involved the co-hosting of seminars and conferences aimed both at academics, medical professionals, and the general public alike.
More information on our work