Profile

Hi there! I am an Irish scientist, living and working in Philadelphia. 🇮🇪🇺🇸 I am a postdoctoral scientist, which means I have finished my PhD and started to carry out some independent research with my mentors.

I was a secondary school teacher in Ireland before I decided to become a scientist.  I eventually moved to Philadelphia in February 2020 (just before 🦠😷) and I have loved it here since. I enjoy socializing with friends and colleagues from work, who are all scientists like me. I live in the city center of Philadelphia and I ride to work on my electric scooter every day. I love to teach and research science! In my spare time, I enjoy walking around the city, drinking coffee, and I used to be an avid rower and sailor so I hope to pick up those hobbies again soon.

My main focus is on circadian biology and muscle health. Our genes code for proteins and these molecules help our bodies to carry out our daily tasks. Some of these genes and proteins tell the body when it is the appropriate time to wake up or rest, to increase or decrease our blood pressure etc. These repetitive cycle happen everyday and they are called circadian rhythms. Without them we would all be active at different times of day! These rhythms are affected by light, diet, exercise, the environment, and even our genetics. I want to learn how these rhythms affect muscle health and how we age.

I also work on COVID-19 public health research. I have research supplements such as vitamin D and whether or not they are helpful and I work on projects investigating COVID-19 vaccines.

The interesting thing about my job as a circadian biologist is that we are interested in how time affects some of our experiments. Therefore, some days I work a normal 9-5 but then other days I could have very have to go to work very late at night (12pm) or early in the morning (4am). This can sometimes be difficult, particularly if the weather is bad, although Philadelphia has mostly nice weather. On a normal 9-5 day, I typically travel to work on the bus or my electric scooter (weather dependent). I start around 9am and I catch up on emails before I go and check my colony of mice 🐭 that help me with my research. I make sure they are all happy and healthy. After that I usually have meetings or various experiments to complete throughout the day. Some experiments take a few hours, some take days so it is really important that I plan these experiments very carefully. During the day I always try to meet my lab partners for coffee or a chat in the afternoon. This can be a time to talk about what we recently watched on Netflix, but more often than not they provide me with advice to help me with experiments. I like to finish my day around 5pm if my experiments are complete.

If I was to win the prize money, I would donate it to the biology students from the Philadelphia Friend’s Select School. I was recently lucky enough to visit Ms Mayer’s biology class there are some enthusiastic biology students who could use that money to conduct a research summer program at the University of Pennsylvania in our laboratory. Some students (2-4) want to visit and and help with experiments at our laboratory. This is a good opportunity for students to see if they would like to become a scientists. The money would fund any materials the students need (The laboratory provides mostly everything free of charge) and transport to the university for a period of three weeks. Any remaining money will be given to Ms Mayer to invest in science equipment.