The GNC Annual Research Day was held on Wednesday the 4th December in the Human Biology Building

The meeting began with welcoming the attendees, invited guests and sponsors by the current GNC Director, Dr Michelle Roche. She thanks the organising committee for preparing an excellent and exciting programme invited Prof Ted Vaughan, Director of the Institute for Health Discovery and Innovation (IHDI) to open the Research Day. Prof Vaughan highlighted the importance and contribution of neuroscience research conducted at the University of Galway over the past 20 years and how this will continue to grow into the future with the support of the new institutes.

The first scientific session was Chaired by Dr Michelle Roche and Dr Eulalie Lafarge, and opened with a talk by Prof Karen Doyle, founder and first director of the GNC, who spoke on the history of the GNC over the past 20 years and how this centre continues to grow and flourish. This was followed by a series of short oral presentations by GNC PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, with a total of 13 presentation by early career researchers at the meeting. The first session was finalised by a talk from Prof Tomi Rantamäki from the University of Helsinki, who spoke about novel rapid acting antidepressant treatments, their common mechanism of actions and the hope for the future of treatment of mood disorders.

The second session was chaired by Dr Jill McMahon and Dr Kevin Ng. The session opened with five short presentations from GNC PhD students from a variety of disciplines and finished with a talk by Dr Katie Murray from the University of Manchester, who described her novel research using high tech optical imaging approaches to examine structural and molecular changes in cerebrovascular pathologies. Poster sessions took place over coffee and lunch with 40 posters on display by early career researchers.

The third session was chaired by Dr Derek Morris and Dr Siobhan Crilly and began with five more early career GNC researchers giving short oral presentations on their research. This was followed by a presentation by Dr Giovanni Di Liberto from Trinity College Dublin who presented his exciting research examining auditory cognition in speech and music. Prof Fidelma Dunne, Director of the Institute of Clinical Trials (ICT) closed the meeting highlighting the role of the new institute and how GNC members can be involved and supported in their human and clinical research by this institute.

The meeting concluded with a number of prizes (see below) awarded by Dr Roche, a thank you from Dr Roche again to the organizing committee lead by Dr Andrea Kwakowsky; Vector Builder, Promega, The IHDI, ICT and CURAM for their support of the research day; to the GNC committee and members for their attendance and participation at the meeting; and support over the last 2 years of her Directorship. Shecongratulated Dr Siobhan McMahon on taking over as the next GND Director and Dr Declan McKiernan as the incoming GNC Deputy Director.

Poster Prize Winners

1st Hailey (Hong) Su

2nd Maria Redmond

3rd Mary Hopkins

Undergraduate/Taught MSc Poster Prize Winner

Robyn Gaffney

Oral Prize Winners

1st Aoife O'Connell

2nd Giulia Comini

3rd Josep Funado Navarro