Máire Connolly

Máire Connolly is Professor of Global Health and Development, School of Medicine, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland. She graduated in medicine from NUIG and holds a Masters in Public Health from UCD. Her areas of expertise include global health security, emerging infectious diseases, pandemic management and humanitarian response. She was principal investigator on a number of research projects including the H2020 security project PANDEM on pandemic risk and emergency management. She is currently public health adviser at the Department of Health on the COVID-19 response and is a member of the Expert Advisory Group to NPHET.

She worked with WHO in Geneva for 15 years where she was lead focal point for pandemic preparedness and coordinated WHO's Disease Control in Emergencies programme. She has worked on UN response teams in over 20 countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Uganda and most recently Jordan as part of WHO’s Syrian crisis response. She has peer-reviewed publications in journals including The Lancet and Emerging Infectious Diseases and has published three WHO books on communicable disease control in emergencies.