B.Sc. in Plant and Microbiology Biotechnology (1H), University College Cork (UCC).

Ph.D. in Medicine (UCC), including a one-year Marie Curie studentship at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Title "Gut microbiota in Human Health and Disease".

Postdoctoral training in Experimental Evolution:  Angus Buckling Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, U.K.

Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellowship on Blastocystis, Teagasc, Moorepark. 

In 2015, I was awarded a prestigious Royal Society-Research Ireland University Research Fellowship and moved to APC Microbiome Ireland, UCC. In 2017 I was  appointed as a lecturer at the School of Microbiology, UCC.

I am broadly interested in the ecology and evolution of the gut microbiota and current research projects focus on the prevalence, diversity and function of gut microbial eukarya (Fungi and Protists e.g. Candida, Blastocystis), bacteriophage-bacteria interactions and co-evolution, evolution of virulence in the context of the gut microbiota (focus on Enterobacterales) and disease, antibiotics and the microbiome including AMR evolution.

To address these research questions we use the selective isolation and strain-typing of focal microbial groups of interest, in vitro and ex vivo modelling and genomic analysis. We complement these approaches by tracking and studying the eco-evolutionary dynamics of gut microbes in vivo. 

For up to date publications and preprints please see google scholar link  - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iOCYO2sAAAAJ&hl=en