Ciara O'Donoghue

Ciara is a PhD student funded by FutureNeuro Ireland to investigate subphenotypes and genotypes in ALS with an emphasis on those with neuropsychiatric disease in their family history. To achieve this, she will look into clinical, neuropsychological, electroencephalography, and genotype data to determine if people with ALS who have a strong neuropsychiatric family history have unique attributes than other individuals with ALS. This will hopefully give insight into the potential biological overlap between ALS and neuropsychiatric disease, as well as categorise these individuals for strategies towards personalised medicine and future clinical trial planning. Ciara’s background includes Nursing and more recently graduating Medical School from University College Cork in 2023. During her time there, she was involved in multiple research projects surrounding topics such as lifestyle impact on chronic inflammation and cognition, as well as diagnostic yield for first presentation seizures. She completed her Academic Intern year in UHL while doing research for Trinity’s Academic Unit of Neurology. Her research interests focus on the overlap between neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease.