Dr Kieran Dalton is a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy at University College Cork. Kieran has published a wealth of research involving the development and evaluation of pharmacist-led interventions across a range of healthcare settings involving interprofessional teams – including primary care, hospitals, intermediate care, nursing homes, and specialist palliative care settings. Kieran’s research has demonstrated the positive impacts that pharmacists can have on both patients and healthcare systems – such as improving medication appropriateness, enhancing medication understanding, reducing medication-related harm, and decreasing medication costs.

Kieran’s special interest area is optimising older adults’ medications, and he has practised as a pharmacist in hospital pharmacy, community pharmacy, and long-term care settings. He is passionate about reducing medication-related harm and is a world-leading researcher on prescribing cascades (i.e. where drugs are prescribed to manage the adverse effects of other drugs). Kieran was part of the iKASCADE consortium which developed ‘ThinkCascades’, a tool which helps identify prescribing cascades in older people.

As well as iKASCADE, Kieran has been involved several large international multidisciplinary collaborations, including many Delphi consensus studies and two randomised controlled trials which evaluated medication optimisation interventions in multimorbid older people (SENATOR and OPTIMATE). Furthermore, at a national level, he was appointed to the Research Sub-Committee of the Expert Taskforce for Pharmacy, where he helped guide Ireland’s research priorities relating to expanding pharmacy roles.

Kieran has been leading the evalution of the iSIMPATHY project in the Republic of Ireland, which involved implementing pharmacist-led person-centred medication reviews in general practice settings. In recognition of this work, as well as several other research initiatives evaluating pharmacy practice changes, Kieran won the Practice Based Research Award at the inaugural Pharmacy Excellence Awards in 2024.  

Dr. Jay Ford is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin - School of Pharmacy where he serves as the co-director of the Wisconsin Opioid Overdose Response Center. He has training as a health systems engineer and his research expertise is in the field of Dissemination and Implementation science. Over the past twenty-two years, the research conducted in his lab applies D&I science to address critical process issues in behavioral health, long-term care and community pharmacies related to access to services. Dr. Ford’s research focuses on conducting organizational dissemination, implementation, and sustainability research using mixed methods to expand the use and adoption of evidence-based practices to improve patient outcomes and quality of care. His approach to implementation science involves re-imagining healthcare through reengineering and implementation science by integrating health systems engineering principles, quality improvement techniques and practical experiences to develop organizational-centric research that promotes strong stakeholder and participant engagement.

Dr. Cody J. Wenthur, PharmD, PhD,  is an investigator in psychopharmacology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has focused on improving our understanding of opioids, dissociative-hypnotics , and other psychoactive substances, and translating this into the development of novel approaches for promoting and maintaining mental health. His research efforts have resulted in the discovery of first-in-class small molecule and biological tools and approaches for modifying neuroplasticity and drug-induced reward, supported the development of drug delivery platforms to mitigate challenging psychoactive effects, and generated new pharmacologic techniques for mechanistic investigation of complex, CNS-active mixtures. The translational impact of this work has been furthered by his dedication to assessment and deployment of implementation models that improve patient access to innovative psychiatric care approaches, including pharmacist-led provision of opioid overdose harm reduction interventions and medications for opioid use disorder.

Dr Aoife Fleming PhD DTLHE, is Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy in the School of Pharmacy, University College Cork Ireland. As Vice Head for Interprofessional Learning in the College of Medicine and Health she is responsible for developing innovative and embedded Interprofessional Learning and Education opportunities for students across multiple healthcare programmes. She is Chair of the University Interprofessional Learning Development committee and is a board member of the Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE), United Kingdom. Dr Fleming is a member of the All Island Interprofessional Healthcare Challenge for Students (AIPEC) steering committee, which implements an annual intervarsity, interprofessional challenge for health and social care students.

Dr Paul McCague is Director of Education (Pharmacy) and a Reader (Associate Professor) at the School of Pharmacy, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He has played a key role in transforming the undergraduate pharmacy curriculum at Queen’s to align with the latest GPhC / UK standards, enabling pharmacists to qualify as prescribers upon registration. As School Lead for Interprofessional Learning, Dr McCague cultivates collaboration between pharmacy and other healthcare disciplines, driving innovative teaching approaches that enhance teamwork, communication, and clinical decision-making. He is a member of the All-Ireland Interprofessional Healthcare Challenge for Students (AIPEC) steering committee, which organises an annual intervarsity, interprofessional challenge for health and social care students, and he chaired the AIPEC 2024 event in Belfast.