Rate My Professor Ken O’Halloran

Professor Ken O’Halloran serves as Professor of Physiology and Head of the Department of Physiology in the School of Medicine at University College Cork. A native of Cork city, he graduated from Coláiste Chríost Rí in 1988 and earned his BSc (Hons) in Physiology from University College Cork between 1988 and 1992. He completed his PhD in 1995 at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and University College Dublin, funded by a Health Research Board studentship conducted in the laboratory of Professor Aidan Bradford.

Following his doctoral studies, O’Halloran held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1995 to 1996 and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1996 to 2000 under Professor Jerry Bisgard. He returned to Ireland in 2000 as a Lecturer in Physiology at University College Dublin, advancing to Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Medical Science in 2006. Appointed Professor of Physiology at University College Cork in 2011, he also directs the Biological Services Unit and acts as Research Integrity Officer. As an integrative physiologist, his research focuses on the sensorimotor control of breathing in health and disease, including respiratory muscle plasticity, neural responses to hypoxia, and cardio-respiratory function. His laboratory employs multidisciplinary approaches across cellular to systemic levels, utilizing animal models of COPD and sleep apnoea, clinical studies in neonatology and respiratory medicine, high-altitude field work, and mouse models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy to evaluate therapeutic strategies like the PREDNAC trial. O’Halloran has authored 166 research articles, 23 reviews, 34 comments and debates, and 12 book chapters. Highly cited publications include “Prenatal stress-induced alterations in major physiological systems correlate with gut microbiota composition in adulthood” (2015, 340 citations), “Microbiota and sleep: awakening the gut feeling” (2021, 178 citations), and “Does episodic hypoxia affect upper airway dilator muscle function? Implications for the pathophysiology of obstructive sleep apnoea” (2005, 114 citations). He serves as Senior Editor for The Journal of Physiology (2019–2025) and Experimental Physiology (2015–2025), and held roles including Meetings Secretary and Executive Committee member of The Physiological Society (2014–2017) and Trustee and Council Member (2012–2017). He has delivered keynote lectures at events such as the INFANT Research Day and the Neural Control of Breathing Meeting.