February 2016 NUI Galway Pain Researcher Wins Prize for Presentation

An NUI Galway PhD student was awarded first prize for her poster presentation at the Eighth Annual Scientific Meeting of the Faculty of Pain Medicine which took place in Dublin recently. The prize was awarded to Louise Corcoran from Tuam, Co. Galway.

The research poster presentations were judged by a panel of experts who commended the high quality of the research. Researchers from the Centre for Pain Research and Galway Neuroscience Centre (within the NCBES) at NUI Galway have had an excellent record of success in this competition over recent years.

Prize-winner Louise, a second-year PhD candidate in the Discipline of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, won first prize for her poster presentation entitled ‘Impaired expression of fear-conditioned analgesia in the stress- and pain-hyper responsive Wistar-Kyoto rat strain’. Louise’s research, supervised by Professor David Finn and Dr Michelle Roche, involves the investigation of mechanisms underlying co-existent mood and pain disorders as well as the identification of future therapeutic targets. Louise’s research is funded jointly by NUI Galway, a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Fellowship from the Irish Research Council and a grant from Science Foundation Ireland.

Professor David Finn, Co-Director of NUI Galway’s Centre for Pain Research, said: “We are delighted to see NUI Galway researchers win these prestigious prizes for their work. Our pain research aims to advance the understanding and treatment of chronic pain, a major unmet clinical need affecting at least 20% of the population.”

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