Prof Fionnuala McAuliffe

  • Leader


Prof Fionnuala McAuliffe

Full Professor of Obstetrics And Gynaecology

UCD Conway Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Science

UCD School of Medicine

Fionnuala is Head of Women's and Child's Health, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at National Maternity Hospital Dublin, Director of the UCD Perinatal Research Centre and a Fellow at UCD Conway Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Science. She is Director of the Maternal and Fetal Medicine Subspecialisation Programme and a lead for the Maternal Medicine services. Her major research interests are in perinatal health, nutrition, diabetes and obesity in pregnancy. 

She is Co-PI on the expert team from UCD and Imperial College London who developed a unique wearable baby movement monitoring system, which will address the urgent need to enable monitoring of babies’ movements in the womb at home, and aims to dramatically reduce stillbirths globally. The FM monitor could potentially identify babies who are at risk of stillbirth and will also offer reassurance when the baby is healthy, thereby decreasing the rates of unnecessary induction of labour and early delivery.

She also led PEARS (Pregnancy, Exercise and Nutrition Study with Smartphone APP Support) which examines the impact of a lifestyle intervention with smart phone app support on rates of gestational diabetes in overweight and obese pregnancy. The importance of this work was recognised through the UCD Research Impact Case Study Competition 2021.

Fionnuala is PI on the TEST study that examines the role of aspirin in the prevention of pre-eclampsia and foetal growth restriction in low risk pregnancy. Her team are following to 10 years a cohort of mothers and their infants who were enrolled in pregnancy into a large randomised controlled trial of a low glycaemic index diet in pregnancy, the ROLO kids study. She is a co-PI in the HRB Health research Centre of Diet and Health Research, a co-PI in the HRB Mother & Baby Clinical Trials Network, and a member of a large research consortium in European funded through FP7 on early life nutrition.
She has developed guidelines for pregnancy both in Ireland and in the UK and is an executive member of the Maternal Medicine Clinical Studies Group in the UK. She holds fellowships at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists UK.