We need to investigate trans-disciplinary and trans-national approaches to improve the lives of people living with dementia.
Current Work
Iracema is an academic geriatric psychiatrist with a special interest in pragmatic interventions for the cognitive and neuropsychiatric aspects of neurodegenerative disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer disease. Iracema is Chief Investigator for the SENSE-Cog programme which aims to understand the links among hearing, vision and cognitive impairment in older people in five European countries.
Personal Hero
Sir Richard Francis Burton
Words of Strength
Building a team with a shared vision
Vision
The impacts of dementia are multi-faceted, so we need to investigate trans-disciplinary and trans-national approaches to improve the lives of people living with dementia, as well as to prevent or slow the emergence of dementia.
Strategy
Iracema is a geriatric psychiatrist working with people who have developed dementia. At St James's Hospital in Dublin, Iracema leads the 'Mind and Memory' clinic, which aims to support people with cognitive and behavioral complications in Parkinson's-related conditions, including Lewy body dementia.
Motivation
Iracema works at the applied end of research, developing and testing interventions to support people living with dementia or at risk of developing dementia.She believes strongly in including the patient and public voice in every aspect of her work and the organizations she works in.
Iracema received her medical school training from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She trained in psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University in Canada. She then completed a fellowship in the neuropsychiatry of neurodegenerative disorders and joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins Univeristy before moving to the United Kingdom, where she was became Professor of Psychiatry in Aging and Dementia at the University of Manchester. Iracema joined Trinity College Dublin in 2019. She recently led one of the largest RCTs of a non-pharmacological intervention for cognitive impairment related to Parkinson's disease (the INVEST study). She also has close collaborations for applied dementia research in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.