I come from Galway in the west of Ireland, and completed a bachelor of energy systems engineering in NUI Galway, before enrolling in an Erasmus Mundus Masters in Industrial Ecology, which gave me the wonderful opportunities to study in TU Delft, University of Leiden, Waseda University, and NTNU. Since 2016 I have lived in New Haven, Connecticut, while studying for my PhD at the Center of Industrial Ecology at Yale University.

Research interests

My primary research concern is identifying and assessing novel GHG mitigation strategies in the US residential sector, which I will address in my dissertation, tentatively titled ‘Assessment of Energy and GHG mitigation strategies from residential buildings in the US with life cycle data and physical energy models’.

Some of the under-studied dynamic important to residential energy demand and GHG emissions I will focus on include the role of household size, housing type mix, and the lifetime distribution of existing houses.

I have also worked on incorporating capital consumption into the US Environmentally Extended Input Output (USEEIO) model, resulting in a paper and a capitally-inclusive footprint tool for the US (CIFT-US), published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology this year. This research shows the great importance of capital inputs to impacts from the residential sector.

In future research, I would like to study interactions of residential and transport related energy and environmental impacts, jointly defined and influenced by decisions on urban form.