Professor Orla Hardiman is leader of the Irish ALS research group and runs the national multidisciplinary ALS clinic in Ireland. She is also the founder of the Irish ALS Register, which is the longest continuously running ALS Register in the world.  The main research interests of her group include deep phenotyping, epidemiology, and pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) with particular reference to the identification of genetic and environmental susceptibility factors. Recent work has focused on the clinical and genetic overlap between ALS and frontotemporal dementia. Her research group is in active collaboration with many of the major ALS centres in Europe and the USA.