Aine Hennessy

Áine Hennessy, BSc, PhD Dr Áine Hennessy is a Senior Lecturer in Nutritional Sciences at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences. She is a Lead Investigator at the Irish Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research (INFANT; http://www.infantcentre.ie/), a Principal Investigator at the Cork Centre for Vitamin D and Nutrition Research at UCC and a Funded Investigator in the Research Ireland-funded Co-Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (https://foodcocentre.org/). Dr Hennessy is a graduate of the BSc (Hons) Nutritional Sciences programme at UCC. In 2013, she completed a PhD in Nutrition in the area of micronutrients and the role of fortified foods in the diets of young children and adults at the Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance unit at UCC. She also holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from UCC. Her research focusses on nutritional exposures and health behaviours during pregnancy and in early life and associations with health outcomes in complex maternal pregnancy and infant birth cohort datasets. Dr Hennessy also has extensive expertise in nutritional surveillance, with a focus on micronutrients, risk-benefit analysis of food regulation and dietary assessment method development (including web-based and automated technologies). Since 2017, Dr Hennessy has attracted over €1.65 million in research funding. In 2019 she was awarded a prestigious Science Foundation Ireland Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) to support her research on functional indicators of iodine status during pregnancy using an outcome-driven, personalised nutrition approach.