Falls Prevention
People
Professor Rose Anne Kenny, Principal Investigator, Falls Prevention
Professor Rose Anne Kenny has recently been appointed to Trinity College and St. James’s Hospital as Head of the academic Department of Medical Gerontology, Director of the new Falls and Blackout Unit at St. James’s Hospital, Director of the new Centre for Successful Ageing and is vising Professor of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Formerly Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the Institute for Ageing & Health, Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, she has been a world leader in research into cardiovascular and mobility disorders in ageing and is co-Chairman of the International Panel of experts for “clinical practice guidelines for the investigation and management of falls in older adults” by invitation of the American Geriatrics Society.
Professor Rose Anne Kenny’s research interests are in neurocardiovascular function in ageing. The overarching aims of the research programmes are to unpick the mechanisms for cardiovascular and cerebral dysfunction in the context of falls, blackouts, cognitive impairment and dementia. The research involves collaborative partnership with disciplines from basic science (developing animal modules of cardiovascular and cerebral dysfunction) through to health service development and implementation. She has conducted longitudinal cohort studies of vascular factors in cognitive impairment (post stroke cohort, NCVI in the community and carotid sinus hypersensitivity cohort).
She has published in excess of 200 papers, 40 book chapters and 3 text books and currently chairs the Falls prevention Working Party for the American and British Geriatric Societies and the National Falls collaborative Working Group in Ireland. She has represented her field on international groups for heart failure, syncope and falls. Since her appointment at Trinity College (October 2005) she is:
1. Lead PI for the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)
2. Lead PI for the falls strand in the Intel/IDA inter-institutional research collaboration with colleagues at NUIG, UCD & TCD .
3. Lead PI for HRB translational research programme investigating why older people with mild cognitive impairment conver to dementia
4. Member of the Academic Board of the European Geriatric Medicine Society (EUGMS)
5. Chairing the falls group for the National Falls Collaborative
Prof. Fiona Newell, Principal Investigator, Falls Prevention 
Prof. Fiona Newell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin and her main research activities are based in the Institute of Neuroscience. Prof. Newell's main research objective is to elucidate the cortical, genetic and behavioural processes involved in high-level human perception across the main senses. This interest is motivated by the fact that multisensory perception is not a fixed concept since it is significantly modulated by information from other senses and other contextual factors such as past experience, internal predictions, on-going motor behaviour and the working range of the sensory system.
Dr. Cliodhna Ni Scannaill, Co-Principal Investigator, Falls Prevention 
Dr. Cliodhna Ni Scanaill is a Health Research Technologist in the Intel Health Research and Innovation team in Leixlip, Ireland. Her current research interests include falls, gait analysis, wireless sensor networks, telemonitoring, and smart home technology. Prior to joining Intel in 2006, she was studying for her PhD on “Remote Mobility Monitoring of the Elderly using SMS messaging” in the Biomedical Electronics Laboratory, University of Limerick, Ireland. Dr. Ni Scanaill holds a B.Eng in Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Electronics from the University of Limerick.
