PFL Scientific Advisory Team
Professor Colm Harmon
Colm Harmon is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin (UCD) and Director of the UCD Geary Institute. He received his BA (1991) and MA (1992) in Economics from UCD, and his PhD from the University of Keele in 1997. He has, together with colleagues, published papers in journals such as the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economica, Economics Inquiry, Economic and Social Review, European Economic Review, Health Economics and Labour Economics and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and has made a number of policy related contributions locally.
Professor James Heckman
James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973. In 2000, he shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Daniel McFadden. Heckman directs the Economics Research Center in the Department of Economics and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy, and Professor of Law at the University of Chicago School of Law. In addition, he is Professor of Science and Society in University College Dublin and a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation.
Professor Cecily Kelleher
Professor Cecily Kelleher’s research interests are in the contribution of social factors to the development of chronic ill-health, particularly cardiovascular disease. Her work programme will include also new avenues of exploration on gene-environment interaction in determining ill-health among Irish people. She has contributed actively to public policy documents and national committees over the last decade and is presently chair of the Medical Bureau of Road Safety. She was a former member of the National Council for Bioethics at the Royal Irish Adacemcy. Professor Kelleher was Chair of the statutory Women’s Health Council from 2000 up to September 2009.
Dr. Sharon Ramey
Dr. Sharon Landesman Ramey is the Susan H. Mayer Professor of Child and Family Studies and is a Founding Director of the Georgetown University Center for Health and Education. She is a developmental psychologist whose professional interests include the study of the development of intelligence and children’s competency, early experience and early intervention, the changing American family, and the transition to school. Dr. Ramey is the recipient of numerous citations and awards for her scientific and policy contributions, and has been selected as a recipient of the Distinguished Research Contributions Award of the American Association on Mental Retardation. Currently, she is actively engaged in research on American Indian families, strategies to enhance prenatal care for high-risk women, and the prevention of learning and intellectual disabilities.
Professor Richard Tremblay
Richard E. Tremblay is Emeritus professor of Pediatrics/Psychiatry/Psychology at the University of Montreal, and professor of child development at University College Dublin. Since the early 1980s he has been conducting a program of longitudinal and experimental studies, focusing on the physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development of children from conception onward to understand the development of psychosocial adjustment problems and their prevention. Director of the Centre of Excellence for Early Child Development, he is coordinator of the Marie Curie International Network on Early Childhood Health Development and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Professor Tremblay’s research interests include child development, education, prevention, family, parent-child relations, child psychopathology, aggressive behavior, delinquency, substance abuse.
