News

Check out the latest news and highlights from the Gillan Lab below!

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Check out this video highlight from the 2025 Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making at Trinity College Dublin. Locally hosted by Claire & Redmond O’Connell. For more see rldm.org #RDLM2025 (June, 2025)

Warmest congratulations to Dr. Kelly Donegan on successfully defending her viva!

Kelly’s thesis “Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of Repetitive Behaviours in Psychiatry” was examined by Prof. Sonia Bishop, Trinity College Dublin, and Prof. Tobias Hauser, University of Tubingen (May, 2025)

Thrilled to see The Economist publish an article by Eike Buabang, “How to form good habits, and break bad ones: trick your brain” which showcases the recent review conducted by the Team Habit.

You can read the full article here The Economist – How to form good habits, and break bad ones: trick your brain (April, 2025)

Dr Eike Buabang recently joined the Food Junkies Podcast to discuss the science of habits—how our brains form them, why breaking bad habits can be challenging, and strategies to build healthier behaviours.

Tune in to hear insights from our latest research on habit formation and behaviour change: Food Junkies Episode 224: Dr. Eike Buabang – Breaking the Habit Loop: How Our Brains Build—and Battle—Behavior Patterns (April, 2025)

Fantastic to see Paveen’s article, “How your mood affects confidence, timing and learning”, now featured on RTÉ Brainstorm! This piece draws directly from his insightful PhD research.

You can read the full article RTÉ Brainstorm – How your mood affects confidence, timing and learning (January, 2025)

Huge congratulations to Dr Anna Rosická on passing her viva!

Anna’s thesis “A smartphone-based approach to understanding how dementia risk factors relate to cognitive impairment” was examined by Dr. Claire Howlin, Trinity College Dublin, and Prof. Clare Mackay, University of Oxford (January, 2025)

Congratulations to Eike Buabang, who was featured on NewsTalk discussing Team Habits’ recent review, Leveraging Cognitive Neuroscience for Making and Breaking Real-World Habits, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Tune in to the full podcast episode here: The secret to developing good habits (November, 2024)

Congratulations to the Habit Research Team—Eike Buabang, Kelly Donegan, and Parnian Rafei—on their review, Leveraging Cognitive Neuroscience for Making and Breaking Real-World Habits, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences and now featured in the Irish Independent!

Read the full article here:
Scientists from Trinity College Dublin reveal secret of developing good habits (November, 2024)

Congratulations to Anna Rosická on her paper, ‘Modifiable Dementia Risk Factors Associated with Objective and Subjective Cognition,’ published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia and now featured in Trinity’s press for its significant contribution to dementia prevention research!

Read the full article here: Citizen science study sheds fresh light on dementia risk factors and cognition (October, 2024)

The Neureka team takes on START European Researchers’ Night!
As part of this Europe-wide celebration of science, we hosted an interactive stand at the Douglas Hyde Theatre, where we introduced the public to our research on mental and brain health through live demonstrations of our app’s gamified tasks, hands-on experiences with our research tools, and opportunities to get involved in ongoing studies (September, 2024)

Huge congratulations to Dr Celine Fox who passed her PhD viva with no corrections!

Celine’s thesis “Metacognition: A Transdiagnostic Mechanism of Psychopathology” was examined by Dr Micah Allen, Aarhus University, and Dr Redmond O’Connell, Trinity (September, 2024)

Claire was awarded the School of Psychology, Excellence in Research Supervision award (September, 2024)

Well done to Sol Fittipaldi and Anna Rosická who both presented their research at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia. Anna presented a poster on her PhD research “APOE e4 associations with smartphone based cognitive markers”, and Sol delivered an oral presentation on her research “The relationship between loneliness, depression and cognition: Evidence from smartphone-based cross-sectional and ecological momentary assessment”. #AAIC2024 (July, 2024)

The lab attended the second Computational Psychiatry Conference held in the University of Minnesota. Well done to Kelly Donegan who contributed to an excellent symposium on improving task reliability for computational psychiatry research, and to Vanessa Teckentrup who delivered a spotlight talk for her poster “Digital questionnaire response time: a ubiquitous and low-cost digital assay of cognitive status”. #cpconf2024 (July, 2024)

Claire is referenced by screenwriter and author Rose Cartwright in her piece titled “I was the poster girl for OCD. Then I began to question everything I’d been told about mental illness” in The Guardian. (April, 2024)

You can read the article here: The Guardian – Mental Health

Claire discusses all things habits on the RTÉ Radio 1 Brendan O’Connor show! (January, 2024)

You can listen to the full segment here: Habits – make or break?

Congratulations to Dr Sharon Chi Tak Lee who passed her PhD viva with no corrections! (December, 2023)

Sharon’s thesis “Who does iCBT work for and why: predicting and understanding treatment outcomes in depression” was examined by Dr. Clare Kelly and Adam Chekroud of Yale School of Medicine and Spring Health, New York.

Team Habit take START European Researchers Night! (September, 2023)

Congrats to Vanessa Teckentrup and Eike Buabang who were both awarded IRC Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowships (September, 2023).

Vanessa was awarded the fellowship for her project “From correlation to causation – Using digital health technology to uncover the temporal dynamics of mental health” and Eike for his project “Understanding the mechanisms of habits and compulsivity: A neural decoding approach”

British Association of Psychopharmacology (July, 2023)

Postdoc Steph Suddell delivered a symposium on her work examining learning rate adaptation following iCBT and antidepressant treatment.

Claire delivered a symposium on using the dynamics of daily affect to understand individual vulnerability to depression.

Anna Rosická presented a poster at Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam (July, 2023)

The lab attended first Computational Psychiatry Conference held in Trinity College Dublin. Big kudos to Parnian Rafei for assisting Claire and the organising committee with such a successful weekend, and well done to Sharon Chi Tak Lee for delivering an excellent poster spotlight talk! #cpconf2023 (July, 2023)

Gillan Lab takes #SOPB2023! (April, 2023)

Claire delivers plenary talk ‘Using the Internet for Longitudinal, Predictive and Treatment-Oriented Research’ at Society of Biological Society Annual Meeting (April, 2023)

Claire features on techcentral.ie (April, 2023)

Read the full article here: https://www.techcentral.ie/focus-on-research-dr-claire-gillan-adapt/

Claire and Prof Marcus Collier sit down with ADAPT Radio to discuss AI, mental health, & the environment (March, 2023)

Listen to the full podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/theadaptcentre/claire-gillan-and-marcus-collier-ai-mental-health

As a part of Creative Brain Week 2023, Sara Rahmani (Laidlaw Scholar, Gillan Lab), has collaborated with photographer Maria Sjöö for the exhibition ‘Stained Glasses’. The exhibition leads you through Maria’s lived experience of perinatal depression and the science that underpins this complex issue (March, 2023)

Anna Rosická spoke about music and brain health as part of the Creative Arts in Dementia Care panel at Temple Bar Trad Fest 2022! (January, 2023)

Claire received the Science Foundation of Ireland Early Career Researcher of the Year Award for 2022.

The Society for NeuroEconomics awarded Claire Gillan the Early Career Award for 2022.

Read more: NeuroEconomics Awards

Sean Kelley successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Advancing mental health research with data science: Understanding depression vulnerability through language and network analysis’. Congrats from all in the lab, Dr Kelley! (December, 2022)

Catch Claire on the PDST Computer Science Week podcast “How Digital Data Changed the World” (October, 2022)

Neureka features at in the ‘Human Lab’ by Science Foundation of Ireland at Electric Picnic Festival (September, 2022)

Big congrats to lab members Anna Rosick á (President’s Poster Prize) and Sean Kelley (Annual Poster Prize) who were recognised for their posters at the 2022 British Association of Psychopharmacology Summer Meeting.

Claire and The Neureka Project feature in the RTE One docuseries ‘Change Makers‘ in association with the Irish Universities Association.

You can watch the full episode here: #IUAChangeMakers Neureka, Trinity College Dublin (January, 2022)

A huge congrats to our very own Tricia Seow on being awarded the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship!

Tricia’s successful application was titled: ‘Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) in Silico: Neurocognitive mechanisms of OCD treatment failure’ (December, 2021)

Congratulations to Celine Fox who took home the 1st Place Poster Prize at the 2021 Neuroscience Ireland Conference! (November, 2021)

Celine Fox discusses the neureka project and all things burnout on the #InTheseStrangeTimes podcast, a series by the Science Gallery Dublin that features cutting-edge scientists and artists hosted by RTE 2FM DJ Tara Stewart. You can listen here (May, 2021)

Celine Fox was awarded a prize for her poster on metacognitive changes following mental health treatment at the MQ Science Summit 2021! (May, 2021)

The Neureka project features on silicon republic! (November, 2020)

Neureka and the Gillan Lab partner with SciStarter – a major citizen science initiative in the USA (November, 2020)

RTE News feature The Neureka Project as it is launched to the public (June, 2020)

Claire Gillan is featured in Trinity’s Research Matters (November, 2019)

Silicone Republic features our paper published JAMA psychiatry (October, 2019)

Claire joined AWARE on Today FM to discuss our research aimed at improving treatment allocation for depression (October, 2019)

Our Twitter study is featured in the Sunday Times, UK (April, 2019)

Claire features on Science Line article ‘Will machines take over mental health care?’ (February, 2019)

The Gillan Lab mentioned in the Spectator – precision medicine with MQ (March, 2018)

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