Gillian Gardiner
International Women's Day 2020: Dr. Gillian Gardiner is Lecturer & Research lead in Dept of Science, School of Science & Computing Waterford Institute of Technology
Having obtained a BSc in Microbiology from University College Cork, Gillian Gardiner obtained a PhD in Microbiology on the development of probiotic functional foods (also from University College Cork but while based at Teagasc Moorepark in Fermoy). She then worked for a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawson Heath Research Institute in Canada on probiotics for the urogenital tract. On moving back to Ireland, she worked for nearly 6 years as a Research Scientist at Teagasc Moorepark in areas such as novel nutritional approaches for Salmonella control in pigs; antimicrobial discovery; and intestinal delivery of bacteriocins and their impact on the gut microbiome. In 2007, Dr Gardiner joined Waterford Institute of Technology as a Lecturer in Microbiology. Since then, she has set up a successful agri-food research programme, spanning areas such as novel probiotics and other feed additives as alternatives to antibiotics for pigs; role of the intestinal microbiota in health and disease; the microbiome of liquid feed, and biosafety of manure recycling. Since joining WIT she has obtained over €4 million in research funding (>€1.9 million to WIT) from a number of external sources (e.g. Enterprise Ireland; Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine; Science Foundation Ireland) and is principle investigator/collaborator on a number of projects. She collaborates nationally with Teagasc, University College Dublin, and the National University of Ireland Galway, as well as with international institutes including the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna; Agroscope, Switzerland and UTP Poland. To date, Gillian has published 86 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has supervised 12 PhD students to completion.
