Niamh is a senior lecturer in the Department of Physiology and Medical Physics. She received a B.E in Electronic Engineering from UCD in 2004. After working in the telecommunications industry and subsequently travelling the world, Niamh returned to Ireland and obtained an MSc in Biomedical Science from NUI Galway in 2009. She completed her PhD at RCSI, where she combined experimental and computational techniques to explore bioenergetic dysfunction in neuronal excitotoxicity. Her post-doctoral studies expanded this work to investigate mitochondrial bioenergetic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s.

Niamh continues to pursue an interdisciplinary approach in her current research, combining neuronal cultures, biochemical studies and microscopy with multi-‘omics, bioinformatics and systems modelling. More recently, she has been applying single cell and spatial multi-omics techniques to investigate cell type-specific aspects of neurodegeneration. Her work contributes to several collaborative projects investigating mechanisms of mitochondrial and bioenergetic dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular interest in metabolic dysfunction in Parkinson’s. Niamh is also interested in the network-level analysis of miRNA-mRNA-protein dysregulation in epilepsy and neurodegeneration. Her scientific publications can be found here: http://bit.ly/2fy5EGt

Current Lab Members:

  • Deniz Er: (AIPD MSCA PhD candidate, 2025-): Identification of molecular PD endophenotypes
  • Yuchao He: (AIPD MSCA PhD candidate, 2025-): Metabolic blood biomarkers for personalised disease monitoring
  • Macarena Herrera (Post-doctoral researcher, 2025-): Harnessing the therapeutic potential of [XX] in Parkinson’s Disease
  • Dipanka Tanu Sarmah (Post-doctoral researcher, 2025-): Spatiotemporal transcriptome and proteome analysis of α-Synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease
  • Hannah Nyarko (PhD candidate co-supervisor, 2023-): Spatial ‘omics profiling of breast cancer tissue
  • Javier Villegas Salmeron (PhD candidate co-supervisor, 2023-): Single-cell profiling of epilepsy brain tissue

Previous Lab Members:

  • Carmen Stepek (PhD: 2020-2025): Spatial ‘omics profiling of Parkinson’s brain tissue
  • Sandeep Chenna (Research Assistant: 2019 – 2024): Mathematical modelling of neuronal metabolism and mitochondrial bioenergetics in Parkinson’s
  • Marie-Claire Fitzgerald (PhD, co-supervisor: 2019-2021): Improving and Personalising Treatment Options for Paediatric Brain Tumour Patients
  • Stefan Haunsberger (PhD, co-supervisor: 2018-2021): Development of bioinformatics software tools for network and pathway based exploration of miRNA target interactions
  • Catherine Sirafim (PhD, co-supervisor: 2016-2020): Localized On-Demand Delivery of Nucleic Acid Therapeutics
  • Diana Smirnovova (BSc: 2018): Co-expression network analysis for identification of miRNA modules related to epileptogenesis
  • Ajay Pal (Research Assistant: 2016): Systems-level analysis of miRNA dysregulation in epileptogenesis
  • Susette Lauwen (MSc: 2015-2016): Mathematical modelling of neuronal mitochondrial bioenergetics
  • Undergraduate students: Nicole Oancea (2025), Rebecca Gillen (2025), Joseph Siby (2022-2023), Jessica Bennett (2022), Ellen Casey (2021), Harishitaa Prithiviraj (2021), Lisa Compton (2021), Saleh Albasiri (2021), Timothy Teo Shen Jie (2021), Rachel Carolan (2020)

As well as her scientific publications (http://bit.ly/2fy5EGt), Niamh hosts public seminars on Parkinson’s research in Ireland (https://www.pdmitoquant.eu/general-public/videos/). She has also written an online article analysing the benefits of doubt in scientific research (2013: http://bit.ly/2eSrwLk), and her career story is listed on the SFI’s Smart Futures website (2016: https://bit.ly/3pRBVgU