Staff Profiles

Prof Connolly graduated in medicine from NUIG, holds a Masters in Public Health from UCD, has a Diploma in Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is a member of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of Ireland. Her areas of expertise include global health security, emerging infectious diseases, pandemic management and humanitarian response. She coordinated a Horizon 2020 project on pandemic management in the School of Medicine at NUIG from 2015-2017 and is principal investigator of the phase 2 project on pandemic preparedness and response from Feb 2021. She is currently public health adviser to the Department of Health in Ireland on the COVID-19 response and member of the Expert Advisory Group (EAG) to the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET). She is also a member of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG) to NPHET chaired by Prof Philip Nolan, President of Maynooth University. 

Prof Connolly worked with the World Health Organisation in Geneva from 1995 to 2012 were she was policy advisor to WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security and lead focal point for pandemic preparedness from 2007 to 2012. Prior to that she was WHO’s Coordinator for Disease Control in Emergencies from 2000 to 2007. She has worked on UN response teams in over 20 countries including Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, Gaza, East Timor, Uganda and most recently Jordan as part of WHO’s Syrian crisis response. Prof Connolly has peer-reviewed publications in journals such as The Lancet and Emerging Infectious Diseases and has published a number of books on communicable diseases in emergencies.