Professor Patricia Kearney is Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health in UCC. She obtained her medical degree from UCC and MPH and PhD from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She has worked in Ireland, UK and US as a clinical fellow. Her research interests are in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, lifecourse epidemiology and clinical trials. She was the Irish lead PI for TRUST, an EU funded FP7 clinical trial in subclinical hypothyroidism in healthy older adults. She leads a Health Research Board funded Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement (ICE) award developing a pilot intervention to prevent childhood obesity. She was one of the first recipients of a prestigious HRB Research Leader Award to undertake a project on a population approach to the prevention and control of diabetes. She is a member of the working group of the national clinical programme in diabetes. She was named UCC Researcher of the Year for 2018.