About
For more than two decades I have led an internationally competitive research programme, both as an academic and lab PI. Along the way, I spent a year as visiting professor in Harvard. In 2015, I moved from Ireland to the University of Manchester as part of Manchester’s International “Diamond Professorship” recruitment drive, and a year later I became “Domain Lead” in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine, and Health. In 2018, I moved to the University of Nottingham as head of one of the largest and most diverse schools of life sciences in the UK. Six years later, I left Nottingham to become the Head of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Liverpool.
LEADERSHIP ROLES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.
Almost 20 years ago I was one of the original proposers that Ireland would set up a Centre for High-End Computing. Together with collaborators from seven universities, we were successful and almost two decades later ICHEC still serves the needs of research and business in Ireland, North and South.
At the University of Manchester, I was tasked with structuring a new cross-faculty research effort, drawing its membership from the three constituent schools of the faculty.
While serving as the Head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham, I oversaw all aspects of the school's operations, including line-management, financial, estates and infrastructure, health and safety, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), as well as holding educational and research programme leadership responsibilities.
My tenure as the Head of School came to an end on February 1st of 2022, and I took a year’s sabbatical to work on my book. Subsequently, I was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship entitled “Machine Learning Approaches to Understanding Pangenomes”.
For all of 2022, I held the position of President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, which is a position elected by the society's 5,000 members. In 2016, I became an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. I was also elected Fellow of the Linnean Society.
Along with my university role as Head of Department, I serve on the Senate of the University of Liverpool, I am the chair of the Life Sciences Jury of the Blavatnik Awards in the United Kingdom, and I am also Deputy Chair of BBSRC Committee C.