Ad Astra Fellow
Assistant Professor/Lecturer
School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin
My team uses multiomics approaches, primarily metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and metabolomic to explore plant, environmental and human biology.
Our plant and environmental science research takes advantage of natural variation to understand fundamental responses and meta'omic interactions related to stress, with applications including: phytoremediation, sustainable agriculture, bioenergy and renewable phytochemistry.
In human research, we use multiomic data within clinical microbiome research in areas including chronic and regional pain, and colorectal cancer. The team is also active in the space life sciences within the international Open Science community, as a member of the NASA GeneLab Microbes and Multi-omics/Systems Biology Analysis Working Groups and ESA Omics Topical Team.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
My research focuses on three major themes bridging fundamental science and application.
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Of particular excitement is the capacity to observe plant, animal, fungal, protist and bacterial gene expression together, allowing a unique opportunity to unpick the functional interactions of colliding microbiomes of complex environments.
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