John F. CryanProfessor

John F. Cryan is Professor & Chair, Dept. of Anatomy & Neuroscience, University College Cork. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) and PhD from the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. He was a visiting fellow at the Dept Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia (1997-1998), which was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California. He spent four years at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel Switzerland, as a LabHead, Behavioural Pharmacology prior to joining UCC in 2005 where he was a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology in the School of Pharmacy and in the Dept. Pharmacology & Therapeutics UCC. He is a Principal Investigator in the APC Microbiome Institute.

Research Interests

Prof. Cryan’s current research interests include the neurobiological basis of stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety and drug dependence. Moreover, his group is also focused on understanding the interaction between brain, gut & microbiome and how it applies to stress and immune-related disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome and obesity and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. He is also interested in applying novel approaches to facilitate drug/siRNA delivery to the brain in vivo.

Prof. Cryan’s research group consists of 12 Postdoctoral Fellows, 14 PhD students, 2 MD students, 2 MSc Students, 3 research scientists and various visiting students from Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, USA & Canada. It is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board, Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Research Council. Moreover, Prof. Cryan receives funding as a PI on the two different EU Framework 7 Programme grants.