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.