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• neuroscience and mental health
• epidemiology/population health research

• Medicine
• Pathology

• Dementia
• Neurology
• Neuropsychiatry
• Psychiatry
• Radiology

With the academic unit of neurology at TCD, I run the epilepsy and behavior group. We have several key projects covering the domains of:
1. Neuroimaging of Epilepsy
2. Healthcare Delivery and Systems Redesign in Epilepsy care: Acute Care Pathway Development, Chronic Disease Management, Electronic Patinet Records, Mortality from Epilepsy in special groups, Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Patient engagement in design and delivery
3. Clinical, neuroimaging and pathophysiological basis of cognitive imapirment in HIV and Hep C chronic infection.
4. Clinical, neuroimaging, and cellular basis of acute blood brain barrier damage in concussion and mTBI
6. Epidemiology and health economic evaluation of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex in Ireland

The projects that are in early development with the potential to attract a high quaity PhD clinician scientist are:
1. Developing protocols for automated segmetation, morphology and tissue denisty in so called 'MRI negative' Focal epilepsy. We have collected a large cohort of 3T imaging on this group of patients. The project would require the PhD candidate to develop new and unique post-processing tools for detection of subtle abnormalities in this cohort and perform clinico-radiological, neuropsychologal and seizure outcome correlation on the cohort.
2. Currently we are proceeding with a prospective clinical, neuroimaging and genetic evaluation of the acute effect of concussion on elite rugby players and correlating this with pitchside physiological serological markers and eye movement measures. We would like to attract a PhD candidate to develop similar tools for evaluating the brains of retired players as a new cohort examining for chronic blood brain barier defects and develop a similar animal model of chronic concussion.
3. We now have developed valuable cohorts of patients wth HIV and Hepatitis C and will require a high quality candidate to develop tools for longitudinal evaluation of these cohorts in terms of clinical and imaging characteristics.