To find out more, follow us on Twitter : @QUB_ARF

The Ageing Research Interest Forum is a multidisciplinary group led by vibrant and dynamic lecturers and researchers from the Centre for Public Health, Belfast, covering ageing, ageing-associated diseases and quality of life.

Our research strands include:

• Prevention – Nutrition & lifestyle
• Perioperative Brain Health
• Delirium
• Cerebrospinal fluid & blood biomarkers of Dementia-causing diseases
• The role of inflammation in neurodegeneration
• Clinical aspects of Dementia: risk factors, cardiovascular and inflammatory links, multifactorial interventions for dementia.
• Lewy Body Dementia - Lewy Body Dementia - clinical trial outcomes and measurements; pathogenesis and biomarkers
• Big data analytics (including data from the Northern Ireland Cohort for Longitudinal Ageing (NICOLA) project)

We have a track record of conducting high impact clinical research with a wide range of collaborators, both in the UK and internationally. Our researchers are members of large international research consortia, sit on grant advisory boards such as the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, and are frequently invited to speak at international conferences and meetings. We also participate in cross-border research initiatives such as Centre for Ageing Research and Development Ireland (CARDI), the Cross-border Healthcare Interventions Trials in Ireland Network (CHITIN) as well as having research links to the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI).

Research Group Academic/Lecturers:

• Professor Bernadette McGuinness
• Professor Gerry McKenna
• Dr Emma Cunningham
• Dr Claire McEvoy
• Dr Joseph Kane
• Dr Noleen McCorry

Research Fellows:

• Dr Charlotte Neville
• Dr Aoife Sweeney
• Dr Leeanne O'Hara
• Dr Danielle Logan
• Dr Sean O'Neill

Research Assistants

• Calum Marr
• Christina O'Neill

Research Nurses

• Alison Jackson
• Michael McAlinden

PhD students:

• Dr Claire Potter
• Barbara Bray MBE
• Nicola Ann Ward
• Rachel Reid McCann
• Ciaran Moore
• Emily Bowman
• Nicola Holland
• Dr Ruth Fergie
• Dr Turlough Maguire
• Sinead Donnelly
• Rebecca Egerton
• Aziza Sallam

Public Outreach Events:

We are part of the Northern Ireland Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK) Network Centre, which means that we participate in collaborative biomedical science to research dementia, but also network to share findings and resources.

ARUK Network Centre Early Career Researcher Meetings

We held our first Regional Network Ageing Meeting in February 2018. This is an opportunity for local researchers and clinicians to come together in an informal way and/to hear about new developments in ageing research from an invited guest speaker. These meetings are held quarterly and if you would like to be put on the mailing list to attend these meetings please submit your interest by emailing emma.cunningham@qub.ac.uk.

Invited speakers so far have included: 

• May 2024: Professor Cathal McCrory (Trinity College Dublin) ‘Examining the impact of life course socio-economic position on cognitive function and brain structure in healthy ageing’
• May 2024: Dr Jamie Gallagher- skills session ‘Short talk, Lasting Impression’
• March 2024: Dr Richard Gault (Queen's University Belfast) - 'AI and its implications'
  
• Oct 2023:  Prof Yvonne Nolan Professor in Anatomy and Neuroscience at University College Cork - 'The role of gut microbiota and hippocampal plasticity in Alzheimer’s disease: lessons from faecal microbiota transplantation studies'
• April 2023: Dr Sarah Bauermeister (Oxford) 'The Dementias Platform UK (DPUK) Data Portal: Large multimodal multi-cohort datasets for translational dementia research'.
• April 2022: Professor Kevin Morgan  - 'Polygenic Risk Scores for Alzheimer's Disease'.
• November 2021: Dr Kongfatt Wong-Lin (Ulster University)
• August 2021: Professor Brian Lawlor (Trinity College Dublin/GBHI)
• May 2021: Professor Assumpta Ryan (Ulster University)
• February 2021: Professor Brian Green (Queen’s University Belfast)
• September 2020: Dr Jose Sousa (Queen’s University Belfast)
• February 2019: Dr Liz Coulthard (University of Bristol)
• November 2018: Dr Joe Kane, Psychiatrist (SpR) and Academic Clinical Lecturer (QUB)
• August 2018: Professor Rob Whelan (Trinity College Dublin/GBHI) 
• May 2018: Dr Paula McClean (Ulster University) 
• February 2018: Professor Colm Cunningham (Trinity College Dublin)

Our core group of researchers based at the Centre for Public Health, QUB, also meet monthly to discuss the latest research in the field, our ongoing research projects, upcoming conferences and funding applications.

Funders