Project Team

Prof. Mark Healy

Mark is a Personal Professor in Civil Engineering and a Fellow of Engineers Ireland. He leads the Geo-ENvironmental Engineering (GENE) Research Group, which currently comprises researchers from Teagasc, Johnstown Castle; and ten PhD students. The group’s research work is primarily in the area of experimental environmental engineering, and in particular, the investigation of the fate of phosphorus, nitrogen and other contaminants in soil-plant-water systems, and the effects of agricultural management on soil and water quality. Mark is a co-PI on the Pest-Man project.

Dr. Alma Siggins

Alma's research is highly interdisciplinary, encompassing environmental microbiology, molecular biology, engineering and chemistry. She investigates strategies for bioremediation of polluted soil and groundwater, with a focus on the treatment of emerging organic contaminants, and optimising the link between engineered treatment systems and biological degradation processes to attenuate these contaminants in situ. She has secured several international research grants, including the Marie-Sklodowska Curie Actions Individual Fellowship project “TOOLBOX”, investigating the treatment of trichloroethylene contaminated groundwater using biochar. Alma is a co-PI on the Pest-Man project.

Dr. Per-Erik Mellander

Per-Erik is the Principal Scientist of the Agricultural Catchments Programme and a Senior Research Officer in Catchment science in the Department of Environment, Soils and Landuse, Teagasc. He has been working with the Irish Agricultural Catchments Programme in Teagasc since 2008. His research concerns advancing knowledge in water quality issues for a sustainable environment and food production system under the impacts of increasing population and changing climate. Before working in Teagasc he worked with research in forested catchments in northern Sweden and deforested catchments in the Blue Nile Basin in Ethiopia.

Dr. Páraic Ryan

Páraic is a lecturer in the Discipline of Civil Engineering at University College Cork and a Conjunct Fellow at the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability (CIPAR) at the University of Newcastle Australia. Páraic has worked in the fields of numerical modelling, risk and uncertainty modelling and statistics since 2009. Over this period he has applied these skill sets to a range of research areas including; climate change, environmental engineering, material deterioration, health risk assessment, marine durability, and water-energy nexus. Páraic co-ordinates the quantitative environmental health risk assessment within Pest-Man.

Dr. Liam Morrison

Dr. Liam Morrison is based at Erath and Ocean Sciences and the Ryan Institute, NUI Galway and his research interests include: presence, speciation and bioavailability of toxic and essential trace elements and organic contaminants in marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, obtaining data to support policy on environmental protection; characterisation and removal of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in water and biological systems; development and application of analytical and chemical methods for studying the presence of microplastics in biotic and abiotic systems; nutrient dynamics and eco-physiology of opportunistic macroalgal blooms (including invasive species) in estuaries and coastal bays understand the mechanisms behind macroalgal blooms in order to develop management tools to control their size; application of remote sensing techniques in the spatial and temporal determination of macroalgal blooms; marine radioactivity and sustainable development of marine resources in the context of global change. Liam established and currently manages and drives the research agenda for a Ryan Institute core facility at NUIG - the Chemical Monitoring Facility (CMF). The facility, which is part of the ASSEMBLE Plus international infrastructure, currently directly supports 2 Post-Docs, 10 PhD students and 3 MSc students, 1 Research Assistant, in addition to many other researchers form the Colleges of Science and Engineering, and Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences within NUIG. This platform also facilitates researchers and collaborative national and international projects.

Dr. John McGinley

John's background is in coordination and synthetic chemistry, and he holds a PhD in Chemistry. He has previously lectured in Chemistry in the Institute of Technology Tallaght and Maynooth University. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers and review articles. More recently, he has completed an MSc in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety at NUI Galway (2018/9). His chemistry background will be of huge benefit to the Pest-Man project.

Jenny Harmon O'Driscoll

Jenny is a graduate of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at University College Cork and is currently pursuing a PhD with University College Cork. In 2019 she was awarded the Engineers Ireland Student Prize for Top Graduate in UCC and was runner-up for the Institute of Structural Engineering’s Student Prize for her work as an undergraduate on the probabilistic modelling of the deterioration of composite materials. Her interest in sustainable infrastructure and probabilistic modelling will benefit her in her work on the quantitative health risk assessment for Pest-Man.

Shane Scannell

Shane is a graduate of Agriculture and Environmental Management at Mountbellew Agricultural College (GMIT) and has joined the team to undertake an MApplSc at NUIG. In 2020 Shane was awarded with an Academic Achievement award for his consistent outstanding performance during his undergraduate degree. His experience working with similar project as an undergraduate student and work teaching NFQ Levels 5-8 students about soils, pesticides and pesticide application will be a benefit his work. Within PestMan, Shane will focus on soil:pesticide interactions