Dr Owen Doody is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Limerick (UL). Owen is a teaching award winner, having represented the faculty in the University Teaching Awards. His teaching focuses on intellectual disability, research and practice development in nursing and midwifery. At UL, he is a member of the Health Research Institute which focuses on convergent and translational health research to enhance the health and wellbeing of individuals and transform the health environment. Owen has also been involved in national projects related to intellectual disability, nursing, leadership, and older adults. Prior to joining UL, he spent over 10 years caring for children and adults with an intellectual disability at the Daughters of Charity in Limerick, initially as an intellectual disability nurse and later, as a clinical nurse manager. Having graduated from the Royal College of Nursing at the University of Manchester in 2005, he then went on to complete a PhD in nursing at Ulster University in 2012. Owen has published two articles on ethics in research and co-authored a book on nursing and healthcare ethics, and his research interests include specialist nursing practice, community living for persons with intellectual disability, and person-centred approaches to care and service delivery. Owen is passionate about the protection and inclusion of vulnerable groups and was motivated to join the committee to ensure diverse representation on clinical trials and safeguard the wellbeing of patients. In his spare time, he is actively involved in his local community. He is the former chair and current Child Welfare Officer of his local GAA club, Bord na nÓg, in County Tipperary, and sits on the committee of a rural regional day care centre for older adults.

Professor Anne Parle-McDermott is Professor of Genetics at the School of Biotechnology at Dublin City University (DCU), where she is the Biotechnology Lead for Biodesign Europe. At DCU, Anne is also Principal Investigator of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory; the National Institute of Cellular Biotechnology; and the Water Institute. From 2018-20, she completed a three-year term as Head of the School of Biotechnology. Prior to first joining DCU as a Lecturer in Biotechnology in 2006, she was a Lecturer in Genetics at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics (2005-06), Trinity College Dublin; and a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Immunology and Biochemistry (1999-2005). Among her memberships, she is former President of the Irish Society of Human Genetics and local ambassador for the Irish Biochemical Society. With over 25 years’ experience researching DNA and RNA, Anne’s extensive scientific career has been guided by producing reproducible, robust data. Her research interests include complementary areas of functional genetics as it relates to human health, and the application of DNA-based methodologies for diagnostics and biosensor development. Her team were the first to apply CRISPR-Cas technology for specific species detection from environmental DNA (eDNA) (Williams et al., 2019 Molecular Ecology Resources), enabling further development of CRISPR-Cas based biosensors to detect any target species. She also leads research on folate genetics with a focus on the DHFR gene family and mitochondrial DNA, and teaches a range of modules (Level 8 & 9) on Eukaryotic genetics, genomics and associated nucleic acid based molecular technologies. Anne is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and earned a PhD in the area of molecular cancer at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland in 2000. A belief that integrity and ethics are the cornerstone to scientific research are principles which she channels through her teaching and actions, and looks forward to bringing to her role as committee member.