Ciara is a trained microbiologist (BSc from the National University of Ireland, Galway [NUIG]). It was here at NUIG that sparked her interest in environmental microbiology and how we can harness the power of these microscopic organisms for biotechnology, agriculture and food production. Her research vision is to understand and harness the true potential of the microbes underpinning various processes to develop more informed means for their manipulation. She has worked across a diverse range of ecosystems (waste remediation, low-temperature anaerobic digestion, aquaculture, and soil) using both informatics, and physiological experiments at lab and full scale.