INFANT Centre News

Congratulations to post-doctoral Researcher Marita Hennessy for this European Health Psychology Society Herman Schaalma Award for her Health research Board SPHeREprogramme  PhD in 2020!! Marita is a postdoctoral researcher with the Pregnancy Loss Group at INFANT. Prior to joining INFANT in January 2020, Marita was a Health Research Board-funded SPHeRE PhD Scholar within the Health Behaviour Change Research Group at NUI Galway. For her doctoral studies, she examined behavioural interventions delivered by health professionals during the first 1,000 days to prevent childhood obesity. Thesis Title: Obesity prevention during early life: Developing the evidence base to maximise the effectiveness of interventions delivered by health professionals Her research interests include maternal and child health, childhood obesity, health behaviour change, implementation science, commercial determinants of health, health inequalities and men’s health. She is experienced in a range of research methods including qualitative, mixed methods, systematic review, and creative approaches. Prior to commencing her doctoral studies, Marita held research roles with safefood, University College Cork, the Children’s Research Centre-Trinity College Dublin, the National Cancer Registry, and Waterford Institute of Technology. Marita is currently working on the RE:CURRENT study led by Prof Keelin O’Donoghue and funded by the Health Research Board, evaluating recurrent miscarriage (RM) services in Ireland to inform efforts to standardise and improve the quality of these services. Learn more about the RE:CURRENT study here https://www.infantcentre.ie/research/research-studies/recurrent/ Well done Marita, [...]

A big congratulations to INFANT Lead Investigator Mark O 'Sullivan on his recent success in qualifying as a finalist at the Parkview Health and MATTER 2022 Healthy Mom and Baby 3.0 Innovation Competition with the Neurobell project. Neurobell is an Enterprise Ireland-funded commercialization project and team from the INFANT Research Centre at University College Cork. Neurobell is developing a novel medical device for early detection and monitoring of seizures in newborns. Their pocket-sized and wireless EEG monitor provides bedside staff with easy-to-use EEG and automated alerts for seizures in real time. Launched in May 2022, the Parkview Health and MATTER 2022 Healthy Mom and Baby 3.0 Innovation Competition challenges innovators to submit innovative solutions to help improve access to care and management of chronic conditions for mothers, infants and children. The four finalists will participate in a two-month virtual accelerator where they will continue to build and test their solutions with leaders from Parkview Health, MATTER and Management Performance Hub. On November 10, 2022, the finalists will pitch their solutions to a community of healthcare professionals, Parkview leaders and outside investors for potential pilot and funding opportunities. All teams who participate in the final pitch day will receive a six-month global membership at MATTER. Best of luck in the final Mark!!

PhD student & ICAT Programme fellow Dr Cathal O’Connor has been selected by the executive board of the European Society of Paediatric Dermatology as a Future Leader in Paediatric Dermatology. He was presented with his certificate by ESPD president, Prof Veronica Kinsler, at the recent annual ESPD meeting in Munich, Germany. What is the Future Leaders Programme? The Future Leaders Programme is a three-year rolling programme to attract and support the careers of trainee/resident doctors who are interested in Paediatric Dermatology. Three positions will be available each year from 2021. What does the Future Leaders Programme give to successful applicants? Membership of the ESPD for three years Registration to the ESPD annual congress for three years Mentorship sessions from a senior ESPD mentor for three years Oral presentation at the ESPD congress in the first or second year of the programme ESPD Future Leaders lecture in the final year of the programme Organised networking sessions with other Future Leaders Programme members

🎉Everyone at the @infantcentre would like to wish a Happy #InternationalNeonatalNursesDay to all our beloved NICU nurses❤️   🙌You do an amazing job everyday & without you neonatology wouldn’t be the same!🥰A special thanks to the brilliant nurses working at #CUMH   @CUH_Cork

🗣️Our Study - The NOAH Study (Noninvasive objective assessment of heamodynamics) is half way through! 💡Learn more about the NOAH study and read some of the papers published here: 🔎https://infantcentre.ie/noah/  

📢The Irish Clinical Academic Training (@ICATProgramme) is opening an application call for #fellowships today   👫Open to trainees in higher specialist training in all specialties of medicine, surgery, veterinary medicine and dentistry   🔎Find out more: www.icatprogramme.org

INFANT PhD profile: The INNOVATE study: INvestigatiNg cOgnitive deVelopment in preterm & full-term infAnTs using Eye-tracking Sonia Lenehan is pursuing a PhD in neurodevelopment and the environment, as well as investigating eye-tracking as an assessment tool in 18-month-old infants. Sonia completed her BSc Neuroscience in UCC in 2016. She began her PhD with the INFANT centre in 2017 looking at how the environment affects neurodevelopment. The project has looked at nutrition, massage, and moderate-to-late preterm birth with a large part of her PhD looking at the INNOVATE studying and investigating the feasibility of eye-tracking as an assessment tool. Sonia’s planned thesis title is: Investigating the effect of breastfeeding, massage, and moderate-to-late premature birth on the developing brain. The objectives of this thesis are: 1. To investigate the effect breastfeeding at two months has on the cognitive outcome at five years. 2. To conduct a systematic review to answer the research question: Does the development of social cognition in moderate to late preterm differ from that in term infants? 3. To explore eye-tracking as a measure of cognition in term 18-month olds. 4. To correlate the measure of eye-tracking with the Griffith-III Neurodevelopmental Assessment. 5. To investigate if the development of cognition differs between late preterm and term infants at 18 months of age, as measured by eye-tracking. In 2020 Sonia was an Irish Research Council [...]

🗣️Check out this new publication by INFANT Research Centre Researchers 💡'An Exploration Of The Introduction Of Oral Immunotherapy In A Paediatric Population With IgE-Mediated Egg Allergy: A Review Of The Literature' 👏By Yukta Ramesh, Caoimhe Cronin & Dr Juan Enrique Trujillo Wurttele 🔎https://lnkd.in/eMPW__GC #immunotherapy #UCCResearch

🗣️Check out this new publication by INFANT Research Centre Researchers! 💡'Risk taking & self-care behaviours amongst adolescents & young adults with food allergies' 👏By Hannah Keohane, Caoimhe Cronin & Dr Juan Enrique Trujillo Wurttele 🔎https://lnkd.in/eGEM9sBJ

🎉INFANT Research Centre Researchers recent paper has been selected for highlight in the Editor’s Focus of the #PediatricResearchJournal 👏Congrats Dr Antoine Giraud, Dr Carol Stephens, Prof Geraldine Boylan, & Dr Brian Walsh 🔎Read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/egCtAAXb University College Cork #UCCResearch

📢INFANT Research Centre was at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology - EAACI HQ Hybrid Congress 2022 🗣️Dr Juan Enrique Trujillo Wurttele presented the e-poster: 💡'A decade of milk ladder in Cork University Hospital: are we achieving our goals?' 🗣️Caoimhe Cronin presented the e-poster:   💡'Brands of Adrenaline Auto Injector in Ireland: What Brands do Caregivers use and are they Adequately Trained in their Administration? ' University College Cork #Immunology #UCCResearch

Caroline O'Connor is pursuing a PhD in the area of improving and standardising the care of twin pregnancies with INFANT and NPEC at UCC and is funded by the Irish research council. Caroline completed her BSc Midwifery in the UCC in 2010. After graduating she travelled to Essex in the UK where she worked as a Band 6 Midwife in one of the largest and busiest maternity units in the country. She returned home at the end of 2011 and began working as an agency midwife in various maternity hospitals around Ireland. Caroline went on to work as a research associate with a medical diagnostics company in conjunction with University College Cork involved in the development of a blood test which can predict the risk that a woman will develop preeclampsia later in their pregnancy. Caroline has completed a postgraduate diploma with UCC in Preparation for Birth and Parenthood and enjoys providing antenatal classes in her spare time. Caroline’s planned thesis is titled: Multiple pregnancy: An investigation of the risk factors and outcomes in the ROI (The MILESTONE study) The objectives of the study are: Examine the current maternity care provided for the antenatal management of dichorionic diamniotic (DCDA) twin pregnancies, through the identification, appraisal and review of national and international clinical practice guidelines. Identify the maternal and care-related risk factors associated with perinatal mortality and explore perinatal mortality within the twin population in [...]

📣Test your machine learning skills & apply to real-world clinical data!   💡Data Science competition - Build an EEG grading classifier https://infantresearchcommunity.ucc.ie   🧠Using open EEG dataset from newborn infants   https://zenodo.org/record/6587973  

INFANT Lead Investigator Dr Mark O'Sullivan and Dr Alison O'Shea of the Neurobell project are the overall winners of the 2022 Ideate Ireland competition which took place last week. The  €15,000 top prize was awarded to Neurobell a pocket-sized brain monitor with automated seizure detection for newborns, which builds on the previous research of the INFANT Research Centre in the field of AI-based interpretation of neonatal EEG. "The Ideate programme really pushed us to challenge our market assumptions by completing customer discovery across different stakeholder groups," said O'Sullivan. "We now have a clear understanding of where the clinical need for our technology is greatest and how best to target that market. It is a key milestone in getting us ready for private investment, and winning the competition will provide us with the momentum and support to bring our product to market successfully.” INFANT researcher Sarusha Pillay and INFANT PI Dr Fergus McCarthy won the first runner up prize of €7,000 for their project pHetalSafe, which seeks to detect and prevent fetal hypoxia and assess fetal well-being during labour. We are immensely proud of our colleagues for this amazing achievement. We look forward to the expansion of their work and wish them the very best in achieving their global ambition.

📣Final #SeminarSeries before summer break takes place this Friday at 12pm!   🗣 Sonia Lenehan will speak about Science4SightLoss   💡Science4SightLoss is an SFI Discover funded collaboration between INFANT, UCC and Ireland's national sight loss agency the National Council for the Blind (NCBI). Sonia will present a project update with preliminary results.   #Science4Sightloss #UCCResearch

📣Check out this study protocol just out from Dr Cathal O'Connor ICAT fellow at the INFANT Research Centre University College Cork 💡In this paper Cathal assesses #sleep in infants with early-onset #atopicdermatitis by longitudinal evaluation Read publication here Wellcome Trust #atopicdermatitis #paediatric #dermatology #sleep #UCCResearch

📣Test your machine learning skills & apply to real-world clinical data!   💡Data Science competition - Build an EEG grading classifier NOW OPEN: https://infantresearchcommunity.ucc.ie/   🧠Using open EEG dataset from newborn infants:   https://zenodo.org/record/6587973  

INFANT Spin-Out CergenX is using recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the early detection of abnormal brain activity in babies at birth. Founded in 2021, Cergenx aims to improve brain health monitoring in newborns by developing algorithms for screening all babies at birth for abnormal brain activity. The technology will enable early intervention by medical professionals to improve outcomes for newborn babies. The start-up says at least five in every 1,000 newborn babies may have some degree of brain injury. Unfortunately, this is often undetected until the infant is much older when parents notice developmental problems, which can have lifelong consequences. Currently, the most common method for assessing brain function in newborn babies involves the use of electroencephalography (EEG) which measures the tiny electrical impulses of the brain. However, EEGs are complex to read, time consuming and there is often a shortage of trained specialists available. It is therefore not possible to test all newborn babies. According to Cergenx (CSO) Geraldine Boylan, early detection of abnormal brain activity is critical. “The majority of brain development takes place within the first few years of life so early detection of any abnormal brain activity is critical. Early detection is essential for improving the outcome for the child and indeed their family. There are a growing range of treatments and interventions available for newborn brain injury, but [...]

📣INFANT Seminar Series continues this Friday!   🗣Clinical Research Fellow Dr. Jurate Panaviene will present   💡Interim results of 50 infants enrolled in The NIOMI study: "Non-Invasive Lung Oxygen Monitoring in Term Infants’’. This clinical observational study is aiming to evaluate if a non-invasive GASMAS-based technology incorporated into Lung analyzer can detect oxygen and measure oxygen concentration in the lungs of healthy full-term infants.