Staff at UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science awarded for their contributions to Research

Professor Helen Roche, Full Professor of Nutrigenomics at UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, Director of UCD Conway Institute and Fellow, UCD Institute of Food & Health was awarded the prestigious Science Foundation Ireland Mentorship Award 2021. 

The SFI Mentorship Award recognises outstanding mentorship provided by a researcher funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Awardees must have demonstrated a commitment to nurturing the intellectual, creative, scholarly and/or professional growth of their mentees, enabled their mentees to become independent and be recognised in their own right as a subject matter expert and shown a sustained commitment to a mentoring relationship that has supported the career progression and/or the personal development of mentees.

Commenting on receiving the award, Professor Roche said: “It is a great honour to have worked with so many bright young scientists, who brought alternative skills into the nutrition and health space – wherein using other disciplines and ‘omics’ approaches has strengthened our understanding of food, nutrition and health. Many thanks to SFI, DAFM and the EU for supporting our team at UCD – the mentees who nominated me really developed professionally within these funding initiatives. They represent the future of science in Ireland and abroad!”

Professor Roche trained in Human Nutrition, Dietetics and Molecular Nutrition. Her Nutrigenomics team focus on Precision Nutrition – specifically the impact of diet on metabolism and inflammation, in obesity, type 2 diabetes (T2D), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and obesity related cancer. Nutrigenomics uses state-of-the-art 'omics' to investigate the molecular effects of diet on health – to provide hard evidence. Whilst nutrition plays a critical role in health and disease, too often the mechanistic basis is lacking – Helen’s team seeks to fill that evidence gap.

Her recent SFI Investigator Award entitled ‘Diet, Immune Training and Metabolism’ in collaboration with Dr Fred Sheedy and Prof Suzanne Norris (TCD) determines the impact of diet and metabolism on Innate Immune responses in NAFLD. She is co-PI in several multidisciplinary programmes. ‘ImmunoMet’ addresses interactions between nutritional status, metabolic health and the gut microbiome, in collaboration with Prof Paul O’Toole (UCC / Microbiome Ireland). In Precision Oncology Ireland Roche’s team are determining if/how the ‘dietary environment’ potentiates obesity related cancer risk, with Prof Jacinta O’Sullivan (TCD) and Dr David Gomez-Matallanas (Systems Biology Ireland, UCD).

Helen has supervised more than 30 PhD scientists and a similar number of post-doctoral researchers. As Conway Director a key personal remit has been to foster Emerging Investigator success, in UCD facilitating recent Ad Astra appointee achievement.

In Europe, Prof Roche has led several initiatives relating to Food, Nutrition and Health. She chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Healthy Life Healthy Diet Joint Programming Initiative (2015-2019). Advises UK and US grant agencies, including Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and UK Nutrition Research Partnership. She is a board member of the RCSI Hospital Group. Helen is also Visiting Professor of Nutrition at Queen’s University Belfast.

Dr Ross Neville, Lecturer/Assistant Professor at the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science received an Irish Research Council Research Ally Prize 2021.

The IRC Research Ally Prizes were introduced for the first time in 2021 as part of the Researcher of the Year Awards. The Research Ally Prizes are a new national award category celebrating the role of mentors, supervisors, research officers and support staff in supporting and sustaining the Irish research community. 61 Mentors and Supervisors Research Allies were nominated by students and staff from across the Irish higher education and research system.

Dr Neville was honoured to receive the award and said: “It is a great privilege and also frankly a great surprise to have been nominated for one of the inaugural IRC Research Ally Prizes. In my role as Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within our School, I have tried my best to promote such principles of allyship, through formal self-assessment and also by advocating for better supports for postgraduate students and early career researchers. I have found supervising a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar over the past three years immensely rewarding. The resulting student-supervisor allyship has enabled me to not only develop substantial research capacity but also learn many new technical, collaborative and team working skills.”

Ross began his academic career in Ireland, completing a BA (2006), BSc (Hons) (2007) and finally a PhD (2013) in Leisure Management at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). Over the course of his time at DIT, Ross received numerous awards and commendations for his academic studies, including a DIT Gold Medal for Academic Excellence in 2006 and the Louis Fitzgerald Hotel Group Award for Best Student in 2007. Ross was also the first graduate of the BA and BSc programmes to go on and obtain a PhD in this subject area.

Ross gained substantial research and teaching experience at DIT, coordinating a range of modules on various undergraduate programmes relating to his primary degree (Leisure Management, Tourism Management and Tourism Marketing).

Ross moved to the UK in 2013 order to take up a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship position within the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Birmingham (UoB). His interests and expertise in leisure management were extended considerably at UoB and encompassed working on broader educational, pedagogical and social policy research issues, and included amassing a substantial amount of subject-specific expertise in the area of professional learning and continuing professional development.

Over the course of his time at UoB, Ross was involved in the supervision of 6 postgraduate research students - 3 PhD and 3 distance-learning Masters by Research - and he taught on a range of modules across the BSc Sport, Physical Education and Coaching Sciences and BSc Sport and Exercise Sciences course. Ross also contributed to teaching on the newly-development Sport Policy, Business and Management MSc and was actively involved in UoB's Sport Policy Centre Research Group.

Over the period September 2015 to September 2016, Ross worked alongside the Youth Sport Trust and the English Federation of Disability Sport on the Sainsbury's-funded national-level project inclusion project, 'Active Kids for All Inclusive PE Training Programme'. The Programme was launched to improve the quality of PE provision for young disabled people and focused on the development and delivery of a UK-wide training programme to increase the competence and confidence of teachers and school staff to deliver high quality inclusive PE. Ross worked as a research fellow on the project between September and December 2015 and led as the Programme's Independent Evaluation Lead from January 2016 to its conclusion and final reporting phase in September 2016.

In November 2016, Ross moved back to Ireland and started employment within the Centre for Sport Studies in the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science at University College Dublin. He is currently the Programme Coordinator on the BSc Sport and Exercise Management course and provides subject-specific teaching, module coordination and supervision in the area of sport and exercise management, sport development, sociology and research methods. Ross is currently engaged in lecturing and supervising students on the undergraduate and postgraduate sport and exercise management and coaching science related courses and he is currently working on developing a strong thread of 'social policy for inclusion' within sport across the School’s academic programmes and research.

Dr Gráinne O’Donoghue, Lecturer/Assistant Professor at the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science received an Irish Research Council Research Ally Prize 2021.

The IRC Research Ally Prizes were introduced for the first time in 2021 as part of the Researcher of the Year Awards. The Research Ally Prizes are a new national award category celebrating the role of mentors, supervisors, research officers and support staff in supporting and sustaining the Irish research community. 61 Mentors and Supervisors Research Allies were nominated by students and staff from across the Irish higher education and research system.

Dr O’Donoghue expressed her delight at receiving the award, saying: “I am extremely honoured to have been awarded an Irish Research Council Research Ally Prize. This is a wonderful endorsement of my role as a research supervisor. I look forward to continued mentorship of my postgraduate students, and I am confident that both they and their research will have national and international impact in their chosen fields.”

Gráinne graduated from the University of Manchester with a BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy and worked clinically from 1998 until 2005 as a senior physiotherapist in Beaumont Hospital Dublin in the area of musculoskeletal physiotherapy and exercise prescription. She then completed an MSc in Sports Physiotherapy in UCD in 2005 and worked as a clinical specialist in sports physiotherapy in Queens University Belfast (2005-2006).

Gráinne was awarded a doctorate from University College Dublin in 2011. Her PhD work focused on entry-level physiotherapy education; "Promotion and Prescription of Physical Activity and Exercise in Healthy & Clinical Populations: An Evaluation of Current Educational Practice and Recommendations for Future Physiotherapy Education".

In 2016, Gráinne completed a postgraduate certificate in Statistics at the School of Computer Science and Statistics in TCD and was awarded a distinction. She was employed until September 2017 as a research associate in the Centre for Preventive Medicine in DCU and previously as a post-doctoral researcher by the Danish Diabetes Center, Steno, a world leading institution within diabetes care and prevention, as part of the Health Promotion team, working between Copenhagen and Dublin.

Gráinne is currently employed as a Lecturer / Assistant Professor in Physiotherapy in the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy & Sports Science in University College Dublin.