GBHI Deputy Executive Director Wins a Trinity Global Engagement Award

Professor Brian Lawlor, Deputy Executive Director of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and Conolly Norman Chair in Old Age Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, has recently been awarded a Trinity Global Engagement Award. 

The Trinity Global Engagement Awards recognise the recipient’s active role in building international relations, embedding internationalisation into Trinity’s educational and research culture, and developing education programmes globally. These activities directly benefit the Trinity community, raise Trinity’s profile and support the development of students into global citizens. 

Professor Lawlor has contributed enormously to Trinity’s global engagement over the last three decades, through his remarkable research and clinical achievements in dementia research and care, all of which have had national and global impact. Most notably, Professor Lawlor was instrumental, along with GBHI Co-Director, Professor Ian Robertson, in securing the largest ever philanthropic donation in the history of the state to Trinity for the Global Brain Health Institute, a joint programme with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). 

The goal of GBHI is to decrease the global impact of dementia through training and connecting a generation of leaders in brain health through the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program; by collaborating in expanding preventions and interventions; by sharing knowledge and engaging in advocacy. Atlantic Fellows come from around the world and from a wide range of disciplines. They work across Trinity and its GBHI partner, UCSF, getting exposure to the world’s leading neuroscientists and researchers in dementia and brain health. To date, GBHI has trained 117 Atlantic Fellows from 37 countries, with a view to having 600 Atlantic Fellows in place across the globe to shape evidence-based policy in dementia prevention and brain health.  

Professor Lawlor has also led or played a leading role in several international research consortia for dementia and brain health at (e.g. EU-wide NILVAD; UK-Ireland-PREVENT; EU-Ireland BiomarkAPD, EU-Ireland NeuroExercise). These multi-collaborator programs have created PhD, fellowship and other training opportunities for students across Ireland and the EU.

Professor Lawlor was the Chair of Understand Together Dementia Awareness Campaign, part of Ireland’s National Dementia Strategy and helped establish Dementia Research Network Ireland, supporting interdisciplinary research in dementia  across the island of Ireland.

With over 300 peer reviewed publications Professor Lawlor is one of the world’s leading clinical researchers in dementia. As a national and international leader, he brings together hitherto disparate researchers into important national and international initiatives that have been of enormous benefit to colleagues and trainees in Trinity and across other universities in Ireland.