Supervisor View Full Details

• genetics, genomics and molecular biology
• neuroscience and mental health

• Medicine
• Paediatrics

• Neuropsychiatry
• Psychiatry

Research Programme
My area of research expertise is the mapping and identification of risk genes for human diseases using high-throughput genomics technologies
My focus has been the study of risk genes for common and complex neuropsychiatric disorders such as psychosis (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder)
I am been centrally involved in international projects that have identified new risk genes for schizophrenia and my group has taken these discoveries forward to understand how these genes impact on brain function and open potential avenues for new diagnostics and therapeutic

Expertise
Large-scale genetic analysis
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS)
Next-generation sequencing (NGS)
Bioinformatics and biostatistics
Neurocognition and neuroimaging

Key Highlights
Identification of several new risk genes for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These include genomic loci where common variants of low effect increase risk and other genomic loci where rare variants of high effect increase risk.
I have 156 peer-reviewed publications and 8,184 citations (7,017 since 2010), and my h index is 34 (Scopus, 2015). This includes 5 in Nature, 9 in Nature Genetics and many others in high profile psychiatry and genetics journals.
Through involvement in large international consortia (e.g. Psychiatric Genomics Consortium), I collaborate with leading investigators in genetics and psychiatry around the world.

PhD projects in the Morris lab can include both analytical and molecular research, and can be tailored to fit the candidate's research interests. Projects will be designed to provide the candidate with in depth training in genomics, neurocognition, neuroimaging, molecular biology, and its application to the study of complex psychiatric disorders.

Example Project
A major component of schizophrenia is poor cognitive function (learning, memory, IQ, attention) that causes severe disability. Schizophrenia and cognition are both strongly genetic. New genome-wide association study (GWAS) research has identified many risk genes for schizophrenia but how they cause illness and which genes affect cognition is largely unknown. This project will focus on genes involved in chromatin modulation of gene expression and centrosome biology. The disproportionate number of brain disorders associated with chromatin genes and with centrosomal genes suggests that these biological processes underlie normal brain and cognitive development. As schizophrenia and associated cognitive deficits result from abnormal brain development, our hypothesis is that some of the new risk genes for schizophrenia will have chromatin or centrosome functions and will be associated with cognitive deficits. The student will investigate this using large Irish and international datasets containing rich genetic, cognitive and neuroimaging data where they can test the role of individual genes and gene networks in cognition at a behavioural and neural level in the human brain. Associated genes will be taken forward for molecular analysis in a neural stem cell model to study the molecular mechanisms of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, and offer targets for new therapy development.