Associate Professor of Psychology
Claire’s lab at Trinity College Dublin is interested in developing novel approaches to studying brain health in psychiatric and ageing populations – a key goal is to develop objective tests that can be used to diagnose individuals and predict who will respond to which treatment. Her lab at Trinity aims to define new and more biologically-valid transdiagnostic dimensional psychiatric traits that will aid in our understanding of the neurobiology of mental illness. In combination with this approach, she follows patients longitudinally through treatment and/or transitions into disease-states, aiming to develop predictive tools that can inform treatment decisions and the allocation of preventative interventions. For much of this work, increasingly large samples are required and as such, the lab are actively experimenting with novel and more efficient methods for large-scale data-collection – these include “gamified” cognitive testing via smartphone apps (www.neureka.ie) and using Twitter as an alternative to ecological momentary assessment.
Claire’s treatment prediction research is supported by a fellowship from MQ, an enterprise partnership studentship from Irish Research Council and Silvercloud Health. Claire’s longitudinal, smartphone-based research (www.neureka.ie) in dementia and mental health is supported by funding from the Global Brain Health Institute, and two recent awards from Science Foundation Ireland: the Frontiers for the Future and Discover awards. She was awarded an ERC starting grant for €1.5M in 2020 and this program will address gaps in our current understanding of how we make and break habits.
She serves as a reviewing editor at eLife and on the editorial board for Brain and Neurosciences Advances. She recently jointed the Wellcome Trust’s Independent Advisory Bank for their new Mental Health Priority Area.
Follow Claire on Twitter. Download her CV.
email: gillancl [at] tcd [dot] ie
gillanlab.com 