Bernard (Ben) Casey

Ben joined the lab in 2026 in his final year of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He has a strong interest in the early detection of dementia, particularly using computational approaches to make sense of large longitudinal datasets. In the summer of 2026 he worked at the University of California, San Diego under Prof. Pamela Reinagel. While there he developed an information-theoretic analysis in MATLAB to measure how much knowing someone’s ability to manage everyday tasks reduces uncertainty about whether they will later develop cognitive impairment or dementia. His capstone project in the McMackin Lab uses data from the US Health and Retirement Study to explore whether instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), such as managing money, medications or shopping can help flag people at higher risk of dementia who may benefit most from further cognitive assessment.