Cian did a BSc in Applied Physics at Dublin City University, followed by an MSc and PhD in Neuroinformatics at University of Edinburgh where he studied biophysical models of electrical noise and synaptic plasticity in single neurons. He then worked for 3 years as a postdoc in the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California modelling synaptic plasticity in neural circuits, and analysing neural population activity data from mouse models of autism. In 2015 he became a lecturer at the University of Bristol and started a computational neuroscience research group. In October 2021 Cian moved to Ulster University at Magee, joining the ISRC as a lecturer in data analytics. Website here: https://odonnellgroup.github.io.

Cian's research group works on three topics in the field of computational neuroscience: 1) learning and memory in the brain; 2) neural circuit dysfunction in autism; 3) statistical methods for neuroscience data.

Current funding

• Biological and Biotechnology Research Council
  Synaptic strength instability from stochastic gene expression in neurons
  2021-2023
• Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant.
  Generalisable neural learning from noisy synapses.
  £207,224, 01/2020-12/2022.
• Medical Research Council New Investigator Research Grant.
  Computational prediction of vulnerable points and interventions for dysfunctional synaptic plasticity in neuropsychiatric disorders.
  £432,908, 12/2019-11/2022.

Past funding

• Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative: Pilot Award (Co-I: Prof Carlos Portera-Cailliau, University of California Los Angeles).
  Stability of sensory coding in Fragile-X mice
  $225,213, 10/2017-09/2019.