Academic biography

Dr Denise Harold is an Assistant Professor in Genomics at the School of Biotechnology in DCU.

Her research focuses on the genetic epidemiology of human complex traits, which is crucial to understanding the molecular pathogenesis of these disorders and determining potential therapeutic targets. 

Denise completed her PhD and postdoctoral research at Cardiff University, where she played a key role in several genome-wide association studies and sequencing studies of Alzheimer's disease, which successfully identified several risk loci for the disease. She has also worked on Huntington's disease, identifying genetic modifiers influencing age at onset of motor symptoms. Subsequent postdoctoral research at Trinity College Dublin involved identity-by-descent mapping approaches to identifying susceptibility variants for schizophrenia.

Denise's current research at DCU aims to understand the commonalities in aetiology of age-related chronic diseases, particularly regarding the role of mitochondrial genetic variation. Given her expertise in genomics and the multidisciplinary environment at DCU, she is also open to collaborating on projects outside of her own area, and has for example contributed to studies on the relationship between mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy and one-carbon metabolism; transcriptomic responses to Fasciola hepatica infection; gene expression profiling of aquatic invertebrates exposed to pharmaceuticals.