Postdoctoral Researcher
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

   In September 2007 I will be starting a faculty position in the Geography Department at King's College, London in the UK.

    I'm a broadly trained plant ecophysiologist and ecosystem scientist. My research centers on the changing role of forests in the carbon cycle and the controls of carbon use and allocation in plants and ecosystems. After my receiving my undergraduate degree in Botany at University College Dublin I worked for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, carrying out biological inventories of the stoney beaches of the Irish coast. I received my PhD from the University of Illinois working primarily at the Duke Forest Free Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment experiment in Chapel Hill, NC. I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Co-operative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, working at the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research

    My early research has focused on plant responses to elevated carbon dioxide through direct measurements of photosynthesis, respiration and growth in manipulative experiments. Currently I'm working on integrating key biological and physical processes with direct measurements of carbon and water ecosystem exchange using the Simplified Photosynthesis-EvapoTranspiration (SIPNET) ecosystem model.

More on my research interests and current projects