After completing medical school at Trinity College Dublin, Professor Cunnane undertook her intern and senior house officer (SHO) training at St James’s Hospital and its affiliated sites. She then specialised in general internal medicine and rheumatology, spending four years at St Vincent’s University Hospital before completing her clinical and research training at the University of California, San Francisco, USA. Her PhD, examining early prognostic markers in inflammatory arthritis, involved laboratory training in the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Professor Cunnane spent eighteen months as senior lecturer/ consultant in rheumatology at the University of Leeds, after which she moved to Dublin to take up her current post. She was the national specialty director for rheumatology training in Ireland from 2005–2012, programme director for Basic Specialist Training with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and concurrently, director of postgraduate education at St James’s Hospital from 2009–2017. She is a past president of the Irish Society for Rheumatology.

PhD, MB, FRCPI

Professor Cunnane’s recent research interests have focused on lifestyle risks in rheumatic diseases.