Natalie Walsh

Biography

Dr. Natalie Walsh is Director of Entrepreneurial Development and Co-Lead of the Health Research Board (HRB)–funded PPI Ignite Network at the University of Galway. She is also the founding Director of IdeasLab, the university’s student innovation hub dedicated to fostering creative confidence, entrepreneurial capability, and design-led problem solving. Since 2020, she has led the creation and growth of IdeasLab into a nationally recognised centre for innovation and experiential education, supporting more than 1,000 students and 50 enterprise partners annually.

Natalie’s work operates at the intersection of education, research, and health innovation, bridging academic, industry, and civic sectors to create impact. Through her leadership of the PPI Ignite Network, she champions meaningful patient and public involvement in research, ensuring that lived experience informs healthcare innovation and policy.

She has secured and led multiple national and European-funded initiatives, including projects under the EIT HEI Initiative, ENLIGHT, and Rethink Ireland, and has worked closely with partners such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and the HSE. A Stanford-trained Design Thinking practitioner, EU EntreComp Champion, and Faculty Innovation Fellow with Stanford University’s global Innovation Fellows programme, Natalie’s work advances inclusive, human-centred innovation across disciplines.

Research Interests

Natalie’s research focuses on empathy-led innovation, design thinking pedagogy, and public and patient involvement (PPI) in research and healthcare. As Co-Lead of the PPI Ignite Network at the University of Galway, she is committed to embedding co-production and lived-experience engagement into research practice to enhance quality, relevance, and societal impact.

Her recent work explores how empathy can be developed and measured as a skill that strengthens innovation processes, and how participatory approaches can bridge research, policy, and practice to deliver outcomes that are both effective and equitable.

Teaching Interests

Natalie teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the University of Galway, with a focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, design thinking, and empathy-led education. She co-leads on modules delivered across the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences; Science and Engineering; and Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, supporting students to apply creative, entrepreneurial, and empathic thinking to real-world challenges.

She co- leads the “Empathy in Action” module within the School of Medicine and contributes to interdisciplinary teaching initiatives that integrate empathy and innovation to enhance collaboration, communication, and leadership. Through IdeasLab, she co-designs and delivers experiential training programmes such as Start100, CreateHER, Innovate4Sustainabillity and the Enterprise Challenge, fostering students’ capacity to connect empathy with action and to design impactful, human-centred solutions. Her teaching approach emphasises participation, reflection, and inclusion, preparing students to navigate complex societal and global issues with understanding and purpose.