Professor Muireann Irish is a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellow (Leadership L1) at the School of Psychology and Brain & Mind Centre, University of Sydney, and is the current Chair of the Sydney Dementia Network.

Originally from Ireland, Muireann completed a Bachelor’s degree with First Class Honours and a PhD in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, before relocating to Australia in 2010. She has held continuous ARC funding since 2013 (ARC DECRA, ARC Future Fellowship, 3 x ARC Discovery Projects) as well as competitive funding from the NHMRC.

Muireann relocated to the University of Sydney in 2017 where she founded the “Irish lab”. The Irish lab’s primary objective is to understand the cognitive and behavioural changes that occur in neurodegenerative disorders and to determine the underlying mechanisms that give rise to such changes. In the last 5 years alone, Muireann secured almost $5million in competitive funding from the Medical Research Future Fund and NHMRC to establish the MotDem (“Motivation in Dementia”) consortium. This program bridges fundamental cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychiatry with real-world clinical applications including new diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies for dementia.

To date, Muireann has produced over 190 publications and secured more than $10 million in competitive funding, the majority of which as CIA.

Muireann has also received several major national and international awards including:

• 2014 NSW Young Tall Poppy Science Award
• 2015 L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science award
• 2016 Paul Bourke Medal from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
• 2016 NSW Premier's Prize for Early Career Researcher of the Year
• 2016 Edgeworth David Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales
• 2017 L'Oreal-UNESCO International Rising Talent Award
• 2017 Young Investigator Award from the Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• 2019 Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• 2019 Gottschalk Medal from the Australian Academy of Science
• 2019 Elizabeth Warrington Prize from the British Neuropsychological Society

Muireann balances her love of science with raising her two sons, Fionn and Oisín.

Professor Muireann Irish is a Superstar of STEM.