Paula Bourke
University College Dublin
Biography
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 PhD in 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. She has a strong interest and research in bio-medically relevant issues including infection prevention and control and biofilms. She collaborates widely and has been successful in gaining funding awards at national and international levels. Her research group works on a range of cold plasma bioscience and sustainable food processing projects. Current research is supported through SFI Investigator, SFI-UKRI/BBSRC and SFI US-Ireland Tripartite awards, Department of Agriculture Food and Marine FIRM, Irish Research Council, the Royal Irish Academy as well as Enterprise Ireland awards. She was designated as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Web of Science based on her rankings within the top 1% of highly cited researchers. She is a member of the recently initiated EU COST network in Plasma Applications for smart and sustainable agriculture and the COST network in device-associated infection iPROMEDAI.
RSC affiliations
Editorial Board, Sustainable Food Technology