About
The Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN) is a Trinity Research Institute (TRI) with 50 Principal Investigators and 250 researchers from a wide range of disciplines including Psychology, Psychiatry, Physiology, Pharmacology, Medicine, Biochemistry, Engineering, and Genetics, among others. These diverse disciplinary origins contribute to its core activities: promoting and supporting interdisciplinary basic and translational research, as well as teaching, public engagement, and national leadership in Neuroscience.
The administrative and scientific hub of TCIN is based in the Lloyd Building on the Trinity College Campus (link to map). The Lloyd building houses several TCIN-managed advanced research technologies, including two high-field human and small animal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. TCIN PI's develop and utilise preclinical cell and animal models, as well as molecular, cellular, biological, biochemical, behavioral, physiological and genetic technologies to study both humans and model organisms.
The Institute provides a gateway for internal and external connectivity between basic and applied Neuroscience. TCIN facilitates access to advanced research and diagnostic technologies as well as to patient populations, biosamples, and genotyping required for translational Neuroscience, which prominently and deeply involves clinical PIs based in St James, St Patrick's and Tallaght Hospitals. St James additionally houses CAMI, a clinical Neuroimaging facility as well as the Wellcome-Trust HRB Clinical Research Facility for clinical trials.
TCIN houses strong research programmes funded by the Science Foundation Ireland, the Wellcome Trust, the Health Research Board, the European Research Commission/ Horizon 2020 Framework Programmes, as well as multiple Philanthropic and Industrial Sponsors. In 2016, we launched the Global Brain Health Institute, a major collaboration between Trinity College and the University of California San Francisco. This highly collaborative, training and research programme, created through a $170 million investment from Atlantic Philanthropies, aims to prevent and improve management of global dementia. It has led to the recruitment of outstanding new PIs, as well as increased focus on the Cognitive Ageing.
TCIN currently has over 80 registered Ph.D. students engaged in advanced research. In addition, it educates 18 postgraduate students annually, who graduate with an M.Sc. in Neuroscience (the only one in Ireland). TCIN PIs teach an interdisciplinary undergraduate programme leading to a B.A.(Mod.) in Neuroscience. The Institute hosts a popular public lecture series annually, and it has initiated and participated in major exhibitions in Trinity College’s Science Gallery. New initiatives are planned in Neuroscience teaching as well as in collaborations with Humanities, Social Sciences and Public Engagement, funded in part through a new Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund Award that is coordinated and managed by TCIN.
The Institute supports and connects strengths in different disciplinary strands, to create new and impactful actions in all areas related to national and international Neuroscience. Neuroscience is identified as a major College research theme and focus in Trinity College’s Strategic plan (2014-2019). If you have an idea or a question, please write to us.