Professor Cannon has an ongoing research programme which centres on investigating early life risk factors for later adult psychiatric disorders, with a particular focus on psychosis. She has collaborators in the UK, US and Finland and has published in high-ranking psychiatry journals. Her main programme of work at present involves investigating epidemiological, neurocognitive, neuroimaging and electrophysiological correlates of psychotic-like experiences in adolescence. This work was funded by a Clinician Scientist Award from the Health Research Board. She is also carrying out an programme of research on the association between prenatal and perinatal complications and early developmental delay as both independent and interactive risk factors for later psychosis. Her group have been the first to report an additive interaction between prenatal infection and genetic vulnerability in increasing risk for later schizophrenia. A further strand to her work is the publication of systematic reviews of observational studies on risk factors for psychosis – such as epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. Professor Cannon’s other main strand of research is the area of youth mental health. She has carried out a large school-based survey of psychopathology in early adolescence with both questionnaire and detailed clinical interview. She is Secretary of the Special Interest Group on Youth Mental Health (affiliated to ACAMH) and, is on the organising committee for the first National Research Conference in Youth Mental Health to be held in RCSI in October 2011.

Mary Clarke is a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Psychology in RCSI. She was educated in Trinity College Dublin and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She teaches neuroscience to medical and physiotherapy undergraduates. Her area of research is psychiatric epidemiology, especially the role of early life experiences in the aetiology of schizophrenia. In collaboration with colleagues from RCSI and The National Institute of Public Health in Helsinki she examines the effect of prenatal and neonatal risk factors for psychotic disorder, particularly prenatal infection, prenatal stress and the attainment of motor and language developmental milestones. She is involved in projects looking at risk and protective factors for mental illness among young Irish adolescents. These projects examine the neurocognitive, psychiatric and electrophysiological profile of young adolescents at risk for the development of psychotic disorder in adulthood.