Adjunct Professor

I have a flexible mind-set and a strong willingness to teach outside my current specialist area, which relates more to food and health. I am familiar with digital learning tools concerning protein/peptide research and have experience teaching at university level (Level 8 and 9). I have supervised eight PhD students to completion to date, all of whom are employed in research or industry and three Master students to date and I currently lecture in new product development related to nutraceuticals at TU Dublin to 4th year students where I design half of the module and set examination questions for summer and Autumn exams. Additionally, I was an external examiner on the Food Nutrition Course at ATU, Sligo (2020-2023). In addition, I regularly supervise Erasmus students from across Europe. 

I have a strong track record in relation to publishing my research and have over 115 high impact factor scientific publications published in research journals including Food Chemistry, Marine Drugs, Peptides and other journals like Applied Environmental Microbiology - many of these papers have a genomic aspect. I completed a Post-graduate diploma in Regulatory Affairs (Medicine) in January 2023 (October 2022-January 2023) and obtained a distinction in this. I also have a post-graduate diploma in leadership and development awarded by the Institute of Manager Ireland (IMI)/UCC in 2016. I am passionate about the use of peptides to improve human and animal health and use computational tools in my work regularly prior to carrying out in lab activities, as they are useful in streamlining research efforts to maximize impact of results. Tools I use regularly include Peptide Ranker, Expasy peptide cutter, BioPep, PepDraw. I also regularly use computation databases like PubMed, NCBI and others. I am particularly interested in peptides and proteins from novel resources like microalgae and macroalgae (as evident from recent funding I have obtained including the EUHorizon 2020 project Algae4IBD as well as the IDEA projects. In addition, the use of genomics to map the microbiome of ruminants is of current interest to me and I am the project coordinator of the Seasolutions project, which is focused on using algae to reduce methane emissions from ruminants by regulating the rumen microbiota. I would bring these skills to the role at TU Dublin. 

 

Programmes:   

New Product Development and Nutraceuticals for health:  I enjoy teaching and am a part-time/guest lecturer at TU Dublin currently (since 2011) where I deliver a module on new product development and nutraceuticals for health. I have an entrepreneurial approach to research, teaching and I regularly work with companies in the food, and health industry with funding obtained from Enterprise Ireland and funded directly by industry.  I also recently won the Sprint UCC innovation prize (2022) and completed the UCC Sprint course on entrepreneurship. I see myself contributing further to this field and other relevant courses if appointed. 

 

Research:  Currently, I am particularly interested in the areas of prevention of inflammation and heart health issues using small molecules derived from natural resources including marine by-products/seaweeds/microalgae and I have worked really on research concerning the circular Bioeconomy during the entire course of my career to date at Teagasc. 

I have a strong track record in relation to publishing my research and have over 115 high impact factor scientific publications published in research journals including Food Chemistry, Marine Drugs, Peptides and other journals like Applied Environmental Microbiology - many of these papers have a genomic aspect. I completed a Post-graduate diploma in Regulatory Affairs (Medicine) in January 2023 (October 2022-January 2023) and obtained a distinction in this. I also have a post-graduate diploma in leadership and development awarded by the Institute of Manager Ireland (IMI)/UCC in 2016. I am passionate about the use of peptides to improve human and animal health and use computational tools in my work regularly prior to carrying out in lab activities, as they are useful in streamlining research efforts to maximize impact of results. Tools I use regularly include Peptide Ranker, Expasy peptide cutter, BioPep, PepDraw. I also regularly use computation databases like PubMed, NCBI and others. I am particularly interested in peptides and proteins from novel resources like microalgae and macroalgae (as evident from recent funding I have obtained including the EUHorizon 2020 project Algae4IBD as well as the IDEA projects. In addition, the use of genomics to map the microbiome of ruminants is of current interest to me and I am the project coordinator of the Seasolutions project, which is focused on using algae to reduce methane emissions from ruminants by regulating the rumen microbiota. I would bring these research areas and my skills in the field to the courses at TU Dublin. 

 

Community/Industry Engagement:   

• Advisory board member of Páirc Na Mara (Udaras led Marine industry park initiative). 
• Regularly present at Science week to secondary and primary school children. 
• My day-to-day work involves industry engagement and I regularly work with the Teagasc Engage team to deliver science to industry. 
• I have appeared on TV in relation to my work. Examples include appearance in 2021 on RTE “10 Things to Know About…Seaweed”, aired on 15th November 2021 on RTE. 
• I have also appeared on TRT World News (October 5th 2023 – Beyond borders Ireland Sea Green – https://youtu.be/aiot7Qnb6Ns?si=-1gQ84hAvc4WZtC5  
• I was a panel judge at Science Blast in Limerick 2023 (June) where I examined and rated different projects put forward by national school children.