Professor Gráinne McAlonan

Biography

Gráinne McAlonan is Professor of Translational Neuroscience and Head of Department, Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. She is Director of the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.

She studied Medicine at University of Cambridge and Imperial College London and completed a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience at University of Cambridge. After clinical and research posts in the UK, she worked for over a decade in The University of Hong Kong before returning to King's College London in 2011.

She is a Psychiatrist in the National Autism and ADHD Service for adults in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her research into neurodevelopmental conditions uses MRI, EEG and pharmacological challenges to examine key neurobiological and neurochemical mechanisms (such as sensory processing), which are upstream of complex clinical presentations. 

She aims to understand how brain development in early life provides a platform for adult brain health and mental wellbeing; how the brain develops and matures in young people with early onset liver disease; and the brain chemistry of adult neurodevelopmental conditions.

Professor McAlonan is a lead investigator within the EU-AIMS-2-TRIALS consortium – a European network hosting the world’s largest grant for autism research.

She is responsible for fetal/neonatal/infant brain imaging studies of children with neurodevelopmental conditions and for pharmacology studies in adults with ASD.

She also runs the Clinical programme in Brain Health in Gen2020, a multiscale investigation into the brain development of children born during the pandemic.

Research Groups

• NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre

• Group Leader, MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• AIMS-2-TRIALS Fetal/Neonatal and Shiftability studies Lead
• Brain Health in Gen2020