Paula Bourke is a Professor in the UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, a Conway Institute Research Fellow and a member of the UCD Institute of Food and Health. She graduated from the University of Limerick in 2001 with a Ph.D. in the microbiological safety of novel non-thermal processing technologies. During her time as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Limerick and as an Arnold Graves Research Fellow at DIT, she researched both thermal and non-thermal processing and their interactions with food-borne pathogens and resistance mechanisms. Her research is primarily in the areas of sustainable processing innovations and novel antimicrobial technologies.