Earlier last week, An Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade, Simon Coveney TD, and Chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Ireland, Mr Reece Smyth, announced 37 Fulbright Irish Awardees for 2018-2019. Recipients were presented with Awards at a Ceremony in the U.S. Ambassadors Residence, Phoenix Park. There were four Fulbright-HRB Impact scholars among the 37 total recipients.

Dr O’Driscoll, commented further that,

‘Given the quality of applicants for these awards I am confident that the awardees will be strong ambassadors for Irish health research’.

The next round of applications for Fulbright Irish Awards will open on 31st August 2018, interested applicants should visit www.fulbright.ie for more information.

The four Fulbright-HRB Impact scholars were:

Dr Aoife De Brún: Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Scholar from UCD to Northwestern University
Dr Aoife De Brún is a Research Fellow at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems at University College Dublin. As a Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Scholar, she will undertake research in collaboration with colleagues at Northwestern University mapping leadership configurations in healthcare teams and explore associations with team performance outcomes and staff engagement.

Dr Olga Piskareva: Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Scholar from RCSI to John Hopkins University
Dr Olga Piskareva is a Principle Investigator studying a childhood cancer called neuroblastoma at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Her work aims to identify and target weaknesses in the way neuroblastoma cells spread to disrupt the metastatic process. As a Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Scholar, Dr Piskavera will visit the Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins University to examine new methods to monitor and capture this process in real time. Upon returning to Ireland, she will continue her work developing new models in neuroblastoma pathogenesis and establishing a translational childhood cancer research programme in Ireland.

Ms Michelle Flood: Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Irish Scholar from RCSI to University of Texas
Ms Michelle Flood is a lecturer in the School of Pharmacy in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. As a Fulbright HealthImpact Scholar, she will visit the Design Institute for Health at the University of Texas at Austin to undertake a collaboration between Dell Medical School and the College of Fine Arts dedicated to applying creative, human-centered, design-based approaches to define and solve complex health care problems. There she will research how these approaches integrate with health care delivery and health professions education.

Dr Tanya M. Cassidy: Fulbright-HRB HealthImpact Irish Scholar from MU to MIT
Dr Tanya M. Cassidy is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Dublin City University, an affiliated senior researcher with the Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire in the Maternal and Child Nutrition and Nurture unit, where she held her EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska Curie Award. As a Fulbright-HRB Health Impact Scholar, she will extend her ethnographic research on the potentiality of mothers’ milk, borders and bioscience at the Department of Anthropology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Fulbright Commission in Ireland
The Fulbright Programme in Ireland was established in 1957 and annually awards grants for Irish citizens to study, research, or teach in the U.S. and for Americans to do the same in Ireland.