Meet the core team

Declan is the Scientific Director of the HRB-Trials Methodology Research Network, Director of Evidence Synthesis Ireland and Director of Cochrane Ireland. He holds the Chair in Midwifery and is Deputy Dean of the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at NUI Galway. He is also Principal Investigator with the INFANT – Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research. Declan trained as a nurse and a midwife, meandered (with the help of opportunity, interest and luck) his way into trial methodology and evidence synthesis and his work now focusses on a blend across midwifery (and broader maternity care), randomised trials and how they are done and synthesising evidence. Declan clinical areas of interest lie in maternity care with a particular focus on interest in the implementation and evaluation of models of maternity care and on methods of fetal monitoring. Declan’s methodological areas of expertise are randomised trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses and much of his career has focussed on building capacity in this area. He has published over 150 papers (h-index 33 Scopus, Jan 2019) including numerous Cochrane systematic reviews. He has led a number of clinical trials recruiting from 100 to over 3000 participants and serves on a number of Trial Steering Committees including those in pregnancy (e.g., EMERGE, HOLDS, PARROT) and Data Monitoring Boards (e.g., CORD, KEEP-WELL). He is editor with the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group and has authored dozens of systematic reviews. Declan has been awarded over €7 million in research funding as PI or co-PI and more than €8.0 million as co-applicant.

Alistair is the Chair and Professor of Critical Care Medicine in University College Dublin (UCD), the Chair of the Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Group (ICC-CTG), Director of the HRB Irish Critical Care- Clinical Trials Network (HRB ICC-CTN), Dept Director of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care-Research Centre (ANZIC- RC), Monash University, Melbourne and an Honorary Research Fellow, School of Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford.
Alistair is a senior clinical intensivist, laboratory scientist and clinical trialist. Alistair and his collaborators have successfully completed a number of important trials and epidemiological studies (enrolled over 10,000 patients in the last 10 years), including during the H1N1 2009 pandemic (900 patients) published in the NEJM, an RCT of Erythropoietin in traumatic brain injury (606 patients) published in the Lancet (first author-joint). Furthermore he is a Work Package leader of a European Union FP-7 project, which is charged with examining the challenges of conducting interventional studies in critically ill patients throughout Europe.This project is examining embedding of research into clinical practise, examining the acceptability and understanding of consent process used in the critically ill. To date Professor Nichol’s collaborations have been awarded over €35,000,000 in research funding. This has included an award for TRANSFUSE (HRB Definative Intervention award) published in the NEJM this year (5000 patients, first author-joint) and a Clinical Trial Network Award (Improving outcomes in the critically ill) from the Health Research Board of Ireland.

Dr Frances Shiely qualified with a BA from the University of Limerick in 1998 and a PhD degree in Epidemiology in 2003. She was recently awarded a Masters in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from UCC (2017). She was appointed as Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Heath in UCC in 2005 and is currently a Senior Lecturer, jointly appointed to the School of Public Health and the HRB Clinical Research Facility. Frances is a member of the BSc Public Health Sciences Executive Committee which leads on curricular development and the implementation of the degree programme. She is also one of the core teaching faculty for the degree on which she has taught since her appointment in 2005. She has also taught on the MPH, Dental MPH, MA Gerontology and the undergraduate medical programme. Frances was appointed as Education lead for the HRB CRF-C in 2015 and is co-PI and UCC lead on the HRB Trials Methodology Research Network Grant. She currently supervises 5 PhD students and has extensive experience supervising MPH and undergraduate projects. Frances has two main research interests: clinical trial methodology and physical activity and diet related research for the prevention of disease.

Prof. Peter Doran earned his BSc. from Dublin City University in 1998 and his PhD from University College Dublin in 2001. He is associate professor at the UCD School of Medicine, Director of the Ireland East Hospital Group research network and Scientific Director of the UCD Clinical Research Centre (CRC). The clinical research, directed by Prof Doran, helps discover ways to improve medical care and to establish new treatments which in turn will improve the quality of life for patients who are living daily with chronic illness. The CRC contributes to ongoing research creating a scientific and caring culture for the benefit of present and future patients and medical research contributes to the development of new cures and better treatments. Prof Doran also leads the UCD-Abbott Biomarker programme, which has established a high throughput biomarker validation laboratory, which is contributing to major national and international end organ damage biomarker studies, reflecting his research interests in the molecular drivers of organ damage, biomarker discovery and translation to practice. In addition to his research and leadership roles, Prof Doran also leads the graduate taught programme in clinical and translational research at UCD and Chairs the Biomedical research Degrees Committee at the UCD School of Medicine.

Dr Andrew Smyth is the Associate Director of HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway, a Consultant Nephrologist at Galway University Hospitals and the first Irish recipient of a WellcomeTrust Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship. He completed a research fellowship at the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University, Canada where he gained training and experience in clinical trial methodology and large scale clinical epidemiology and global health. He also has a leadership role in the MSc Clinical Research at NUI Galway delivering courses in Fundamentals of Health Research, Clinical Trial Methodology and Systematic Review Methodology.

As National Programme Manager for the Health Research Board –Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) Dr Galvin is responsible for the development, maintenance and expansion of an energetic, adaptive, and innovative network. Along with the Executive Committee, Sandra is responsible for shaping the strategic direction of the network as well as delivering on the core activities of the network. Sandra is responsible for the networks initiation and expansion, strategic development, coordination of events and for running the Trials Methodology and Reporting Advisory Service (TMRAS), as well as promoting the network via social media and attendance at conferences and events. Sandra has led on creating a number of key collaborations with national organisations to improve and build on the current randomised trial support infrastructure in Ireland.

Linda has 20 years’ experience using qualitative research to explore a range of health and social questions. A midwife and qualitative researcher by training, Linda’s research focuses largely in the fields of maternity care; methodological research using qualitative and quantitative evidence synthesis, and the application of qualitative methodologies to inform trials, trial methodology and core outcome set development. Linda is passionate about understanding how we help people, and children in particular, to learn how to recognise and assess health claims and has led two projects within the HRB-TRMNs suite of public engagement activities (an evaluation of the HRB-TMRN START initiative and contextualising the Informed Health Choices for use in primary schools in Ireland). She is also a member of the research teams of PRIORITY II; The People’s Trial; the Encounter Study (Recruiters Experiences of Recruiting Pregnant Women to Clinical Trials); COHESION (Core Outcomes in Neonatal Encephalopathy); COS development of the INSPIRE Research Group; the MILO Study (Membrane sweeping to prevent post-term pregnancy); the QUALShare Project (Qualitative data sharing practices in clinical trials in the UK and Ireland); The MERIT Project (Minority ExpeRiences In Trials); and Qualitative Evidence Syntheses focusing on recruitment to trials. Linda is an active member of the Trial Conduct Working Group (Qualitative Research in Trials, and Recruitment to Trials Strands) of the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership (TMRP) and a Research Advisor with the Qualitative Research in Trials Centre (QUESTS). Linda represents QUESTS on the HRB-TMRN’s Executive Committee.

Valerie is a Professor in Midwifery at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, and a registered General Nurse, Midwife and Clinical Nurse Teacher. Valerie’s research interests extend to all areas of maternity care and healthcare research methods, with specific topic expertise in the areas of assessing fetal wellbeing (fetal heart rate monitoring and fetal movements) and intrapartum care. Valerie’s areas of methodological research expertise include systematic reviews, randomised trials, core outcome set development and survey research, and she has experience in qualitative research methods. Valerie is a senior Cochrane Ireland systematic review trainer, a member of the Executive Committee of the HRB-Trials Methodology Research Network, a member of the Steering Committee of Evidence Synthesis Ireland and was a member of a previous EU COST Action (ISO907) Childbirth Cultures, Concerns and Consequences, Creating a Dynamic EU Framework for Optimal Maternity Care).

Dr Elaine Toomey is a Lecturer in the School of Allied Health in the University of Limerick. She is also a Health Research Board ‘Applying Research into Policy and Practice’ Research Fellow. She is a Cochrane Ireland Research Associate and a member of both the Health Research Institute (University of Limerick) and the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (National University of Ireland Galway). Elaine is a Chartered Physiotherapist and obtained her PhD from University College Dublin (2016) and her MSc and BSc from the University of Limerick (2012, 2010). Until April 2020, Elaine was Associate Director of Cochrane Ireland within Evidence Synthesis Ireland and led the implementation of the Evidence Synthesis Ireland Fellowship Scheme. Previously, Elaine was a Health Research Board (HRB) Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Post-doctoral Research Fellow (2016-2019), where she co-led the development of a complex behaviour change childhood obesity prevention intervention, with a specific focus on process and implementation outcomes. Elaine was a Visiting Researcher at Hunter New England Population Health Service/Newcastle University (Newcastle, Australia) in 2018, the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine in Western University (Ontario, Canada) in 2018, and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (Ontario, Canada) in 2017 and 2018. Elaine’s research has two main strands – 1) utilising health behaviour change for chronic disease prevention and management, and 2) enhancing the methods used for the implementation of health research into policy and practice. She has specific methodological expertise in evidence synthesis, implementation science/knowledge translation, process evaluation and fidelity/adaptation within trials of complex behaviour change interventions. In 2016 Elaine was awarded a Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science for Emerging Researchers from the University of California Berkeley for her work in fidelity and transparency of behaviour change interventions. She is also a Catalyst for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), a member of the Health Research Board Open Research National Steering Committee and a keen advocate for open science. She is a recipient of the Irish Canadian University Foundation James M. Flaherty Early Career Scholarship (2017), the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine Early Career Award (2020), the European Health Psychology Stan Maes Early Career Award (2020) and a Euroscience European Young Researcher Award (EYRA) finalist (2020). She has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal publications as well as numerous blogposts and alternative research outputs and has secured over €3,720,000 in national and international research funding as Principal Investigator or Co-applicant/Collaborator.

Born too many years ago in Ayr, Scotland, Derek was treated successfully for throat cancer in 1995. A former teacher, Derek worked with young people experiencing difficulties in adjusting to mainstream education in Glasgow then Nottinghamshire where he now lives. He subsequently became actively involved in numerous aspects of patient involvement and advocacy at a local, national and international level being the founder Chair of the Consumer Liaison Group for the National Cancer Research Institute, UK. Derek’s connection with methodology research is based on his interest in making all studies as efficient, relevant and effective as possible. In 2020 Derek was appointed Honorary Professor at National University of Ireland, Galway. Recently Derek has been co-chairing the UK Health Research Authority (HRA) #MakeItPublic Campaign Group on Research Transparency. He is also a Non-Exec Director for the ISRCTN Registry.