Dr. Áine O’Connor holds a degree in Nutritional Sciences from UCC and a PhD in nutritional metabolomics from UCD. She has significant teaching experience, having worked as a Nutrition Lecturer at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, where she taught both undergraduate and postgraduate human nutrition programmes. Dr. O’Connor is a registered Public Health Nutritionist (RNutr) with the UK Association for Nutrition and has also worked as a Nutrition Scientist for the British Nutrition Foundation, focusing on nutrition science communication, writing articles, and managing media queries. She contributed to EU-funded projects, overseeing the dissemination of findings and leading the development of a best practice guidance document for health claim dossiers as part of the FP7 Bacchus project. Dr. O'Connor is currently a Lecturer and Joint Programme Coordinator of the BSc in Nutrition and Health Science at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS).

Dr. O'Connor’s research interests center on public health nutrition, particularly in early childhood nutrition, with a focus on breastfeeding support and infant nutrition. She is a Principal Investigator in the Nutrition Pillar of the Sport Health and Exercise (SHE) Centre and supervises projects, including PhD research on parental knowledge of vitamin D and iron supplementation for Irish children and an MSc study on peer support for breastfeeding success. Dr. O'Connor is an active member of the Association for Nutrition, the Nutrition Society, and the Nutri-PD Community of Practice.