Dr Ciara Keating

Biography	Dr Ciara Keating is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering within the Department of Engineering at Durham University. She is a trained microbiologist (BSc from the National University of Ireland, Galway [NUIG - now the University of Galway]). From the outset, her interests were in environmental microbiology and how we can harness the power of microbial populations in biotechnology. She pursued a PhD at NUI Galway in research that combined engineering and microbiology. Here, she applied mixed microbial populations for biological waste remediation and bioenergy production in low-temperature conditions in work that was later taken to full-scale applications. In 2016, she joined the University of Glasgow (UoG) Water and Environment research group exploring novel anaerobic imaging, international collaborations on decentralised wastewater treatment systems, and bioinformatic approaches in microbiology. Recently, her focus has been on sustainable agriculture, having worked as a postdoc on the cross-disciplinary Des-Bl grant (‘Building a decision support tool for potato blackleg disease’ - led by Prof. Ian Toth; James Hutton Institute). Her ambitions at Durham University are to use this expertise to develop more informed means to manipulate mixed microbial communities in biotechnology and agriculture. She is particularly interested in developing novel tools to advance our understanding of microbial interactions. Dr Keating is currently accepting PhD students and will consider undergraduates for studentship schemes (e.g. Microbiology Society, Microbiology International, and the British Society for Plant Pathology).

Biography

Dr Ciara Keating is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering within the Department of Engineering at Durham University. She is a trained microbiologist (BSc from the National University of Ireland, Galway [NUIG - now the University of Galway]). From the outset, her interests were in environmental microbiology and how we can harness the power of microbial populations in biotechnology. She pursued a PhD at NUI Galway in research that combined engineering and microbiology. Here, she applied mixed microbial populations for biological waste remediation and bioenergy production in low-temperature conditions in work that was later taken to full-scale applications. In 2016, she joined the University of Glasgow (UoG) Water and Environment research group exploring novel anaerobic imaging, international collaborations on decentralised wastewater treatment systems, and bioinformatic approaches in microbiology. Recently, her focus has been on sustainable agriculture, having worked as a postdoc on the cross-disciplinary Des-Bl grant (‘Building a decision support tool for potato blackleg disease’ - led by Prof. Ian Toth; James Hutton Institute).

Her ambitions at Durham University are to use this expertise to develop more informed means to manipulate mixed microbial communities in biotechnology and agriculture. She is particularly interested in developing novel tools to advance our understanding of microbial interactions.

Dr Keating is currently accepting PhD students and will consider undergraduates for studentship schemes (e.g. Microbiology Society, Microbiology International, and the British Society for Plant Pathology).