معرفی
Dervla O’Malley is a Senior Lecturer and Principal Investigator in the Department of Physiology at University College Cork (UCC), and a Funded Investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland. She serves as Programme Director for the MSc Clinical Measurement Physiology. Her academic journey includes a First-Class Honours degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Ulster, followed by a PhD in Neurosciences at the University of Dundee. She has held post-doctoral positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, and the APC Microbiome Institute, with a visiting scholar stint at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Her research focuses on cellular signaling mechanisms in the enteric nervous system, particularly cytokine and hormone interactions, and cross-kingdom communication between gut microbes and the nervous system. She investigates microbial influences on cognitive behavior and neuromuscular dysfunction, employing electrophysiological techniques to study vagus nerve activity and microbial signaling pathways. With a H-index of 28 and over 45 publications, her work bridges microbiology, neuroscience, and physiology.
O’Malley’s contributions include 6 book chapters, 12 reviews, and more than 100 conference proceedings. Her lab uses calcium imaging, immunofluorescence, and absorpto-secretory studies to explore microbial-host signaling. Key areas of interest include GLP-1 secreting L-cells as microbial signal translators and immune-endocrine-neural interactions in the microbe-gut-brain axis.
