Clinical Lead for Paediatric Research
Clinical Lead for Paediatric Research / Principal Investigator
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Deirdre Murray is a Consultant Paediatrician and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University College, Cork. Deirdre is the Principal Investigator of the Cork BASELINE birth cohort, one of the largest and most detailed mother-child cohorts in Europe and the first and currently only longitudinal birth cohort in Ireland.
Deirdre qualified from University College Cork in 1995, and completed subspecialist paediatric training in Paediatric Intensive Care Medicine in Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children, and as a Paediatric Intensive care Fellow in the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne from 2003-2004. She completed her PhD thesis on neuro-developmental outcome in hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy in 2008. In 2012 she was awarded a prestigious Health Research Board Clinician Scientist Award for BiHiVE an ongoing project focusing on the discovery and validation of biomarkers in neonatal brain injury.
Deirdre is the Principal Investigator of the Cork BASELINE birth cohort. BASELINE is one of the largest and most detailed mother-child cohorts in Europe and is also the first and currently only longitudinal birth cohort in Ireland. It contains data and biological samples from over 2000 Irish children. BASELINE is currently profiling the participating children at the age of 5. This study is a unique resource for collaborative research in the fields of allergy, obesity and genetic programming.
For the last 5 years, Prof Murray’s research has focused on early brain injury, and the development of new ways to predict and assess neurocognitive outcome in children.