Dr Mairéad O’Driscoll was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Health Research Board (HRB) in 2020, where she oversees an annual investment of €45m in health research activity, an awards portfolio of approximately €200m and leads a staff of 75 people. Before being appointed CEO, Mairéad held a number of different roles in the HRB, including Director of Funding, as well as Head of Policy, Evaluation and External Relations. Prior to joining the HRB, Mairéad worked as a researcher in both academia and industry before moving into policy research, initially with the Royal Society in London, and later with the Wellcome Trust. She also spent time in South Africa where she worked on the development of a national research and technology foresight study. She is a member of several national and international groups, including the Executive Committee of International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (ICPerMed), which she chaired for two years. Mairéad is a graduate of both Trinity College Dublin and the University of London.

Dr Anne Costello is a Project Officer at the HRB, where she is responsible for the administration of funding calls within the HRB health research careers portfolio for academic researchers. The portfolio spans across all career stages, from undergraduate, PhD and postdoctoral, to independent investigator stages and leadership level. It includes summer student scholarships and postdoctoral research fellowships, as well as emerging investigator and research leader awards. Anne holds a PhD in Medical Microbiology with a specific focus in cystic fibrosis pathogenicity from Technological University Dublin (TUD) (formerly ITT, Dublin). Before moving into research funding, Anne was an academic and researcher. She carried out postdoctoral research in oncology at University College Dublin, and was formerly a lecturer at TUD and Nanjing University of Technology in Nanjing, China. Anne has worked and published with international and national collaborators. She has served as a peer reviewer for BMC Journals and is currently an external examiner for TUD.

Dr Sarah E. Barry is Assistant Professor of Health Services Management at Trinity College Dublin, where she is Director of the Centre for Health Policy and Management, and Director of the MSc in Health Services Management. She is also Co-Director of the HRB funded SPHeRE programme, Ireland’s national research training programme for population health and health services research. Sarah’s research on integrated care implementation in complex health and social care systems addresses health services reform policy, development, and design. As a senior researcher, she has completed projects for the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Centre for Effective Services (CES), and M.CO. Sarah currently sits on the Performance and Delivery Committee of the HSE Board, and is a key contributor to many national research projects including the HRB funded RESTORE programme, which examines health system resilience in the face of crisis, as well as the foundations for Sláintecare implementation. She was a member of the Trinity team who advised the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Future of Healthcare in Ireland, that led to the production of the Sláintecare Report in 2017.

Dr Karen Matvienko-Sikar is a lecturer in the School of Public Health at University College Cork (UCC), where she is also a Health Research Board Applying Research in Policy and Practice Fellow. As a health psychologist, Karen’s research focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions to improve maternal and child health outcomes. Her research interests and expertise include maternal and child health, particularly perinatal mental health and childhood obesity. Karen first joined the School of Public Health as a researcher in 2016, when she was awarded a Health Research Board Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Postdoctoral Fellowship. An alma mater of UCC, Karen holds a PhD and MA in Applied Psychology.

Seán Dinneen is Professor of Diabetic Medicine at National University of Ireland, Galway; and Consultant Endocrinologist at Galway University Hospitals. He is also the National Lead for the Diabetes Clinical Programme at the Health Service Executive, and Programme Lead of a HRB/IRC funded PPI Ignite Network to increase capacity for high-quality public and patient involvement in health and social care research in Ireland. Upon graduating from medical school at University College Cork, Seán completed Internal Medicine Residency and Endocrinology sub-specialty training at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. After a period of postgraduate training and work experience in the US (Mayo Clinic), Canada (McMaster University) and the UK (Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge), he returned to Ireland as an Academic Endocrinologist. Seán served as Head of the School of Medicine at NUI Galway (2013-16), and was part of successful bids that brought a School of Podiatric Medicine and a Clinical Research Facility to NUI Galway. His clinical research interests include developing and evaluating programmes of self-management education and support for people living with diabetes, and developing optimal models of community-based diabetes care. 

Ian Robertson is Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, where he was Founding Director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. Currently, Ian is Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute (at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California, San Francisco). A trained clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, he is internationally renowned for his research on neuropsychology. Amongst his many affiliations, Ian is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of Acadamia Europea. He has written five books and numerous articles and commentary pieces in the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Irish Times, Time magazine and New York magazine, among others. He has appeared on BBC Radio and featured in several major television documentaries. He is a regular speaker at major futurology and business conferences across Europe, the US and Asia. His most recent title How Confidence Works was published by Penguin in June 2021.

Dr Anne Cody is Head of Investigator-led Grants, Research Careers and Enablers at the Health Research Board (HRB). With a background in cell biology, Anne has spent ten years as a researcher in both Germany and Ireland. Anne has been working at the HRB in a variety of roles for almost 20 years. During this time, she has gained experience across all aspects of health research and funding instruments, working across a wide group of stakeholders. Anne has been the driver behind the HRB’s systems approach to Public, Patient and Carer Involvement (PPI) and is a steering group member of the Ensuring Value in Research Funders’ Forum. She has been actively involved in tackling unconscious bias, has initiated a number of transparency initiatives, and represents the HRB on two international groups that provide thought leadership on research culture and responsible research assessment, respectively.