Deirdre O’Shea, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Clinical Neuropsychologist in the Department of Neurology at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. O’Shea earned her Ph.D. in Clinical and Health Psychology (neuropsychology track) from the University of Florida.  She is a licensed psychologist in Florida (PY11880), with her primary expertise in neuropsychological evaluations of adults. She completed her pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship training at Alpert Brown Medical School where she remained for a two-year clinical neuropsychological fellowship. While at Brown, she also served as the Aging and Dementia Research Fellow in the Department of Neurology (Memory Disorders clinic). She completed her M.S. in Neuropsychology at the University of Edinburgh and undergraduate education in Sociology and Psychology at University College Cork, Ireland where she is a citizen.

Broadly, Dr. O’Shea’s research investigates risk and resilience factors that contribute to variability in cognitive aging and predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Dr. O’Shea is currently working on developing novel DNA methylation (DNAm) biomarkers for predicting ADRD risk. These epigenetic markers offer a quantifiable metric of the interplay between genetic and environmental factors over the life course. She is the Principle Investigator of a study titled ‘’Developing a DNAm Biomarker for Cognitive Aging: Addressing Disparities and Promoting Community Engagement’’ which is supported by a  two-year career development award sponsored by the Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute/ National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH: 1K12TR004555). Using these DNAm biomarkers, Dr. O’Shea’s research aims to more precisely characterize the relative influence of factors that either bolster cognitive resilience or amplify vulnerability which may lead to enhanced early detection, risk assessment, and personalized interventions for cognitive decline and dementia.

Dr. O’Shea is also a Topic Editor on Epigenetics and Lifestyle in Brain Aging for the journal ‘Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience’ and has served as a reviewer for several leading journals in her field including ‘Neurobiology of Aging’, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring and Neuropsychology Review. In recognition of her significant research contributions to her field she was granted United States permanent residency status via the National Interest Waiver program in 2022 to allow her to continue her research in the US indefinitely.

A comprehensive list of Dr. O’Shea’s peer-reviewed publications can be found here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/deirdre.oshea.3/bibliography/public/