ProfessorSheila McBreen

Sheila McBreen is a Professor in the School of Physics. She completed her PhD in 2004 on the subject of the prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected with NASA's Compton Gamma-ray Space Observatory. After graduation, she worked as a Research Fellow in the European Space Agency (ESA) in The Netherlands focusing on high-energy observations of extragalactic sources. In 2006, she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union and moved to the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial physics (MPE) in Munich. While at MPE, she joined the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team and continues to be an active team member. The GBM is an instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Her interests include gamma-ray bursts, their afterglows and host galaxies, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and developing instrumentation for the next generation gamma-ray space mission. Sheila is a member of the EIRSAT-1 team and was recently awarded a Science Foundation Ireland Career Development Award. Additionally, she was co-founder and CTO of Parameter Space Ltd, a UCD spin-out company working on European Space Agency contracts. She is currently the principal investigator of a Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland award in the area of wind energy and a European Space Agency contract on the future of on-board data processing. She is PI of a Research Ireland Award to develop a CubeSat  for the detection and locaisation of gamma-ray bursts called GIFTS.

In addition to her research activities, Sheila has an established record in the pursuit of gender equality. She was the inaugural chair of the Women in the Sciences committee (WITS), a member of the group of volunteers in Ireland that lead to the introduction of Athena SWAN (initially as a pilot with HEA support). She served on the national committee on Athena SWAN for three years and on the UCD Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion UMT subcommittee in UCD also for three years as College of Scientist representative. She led the first School of Physics Juno successful Practitioner application. The School of Physics now has Juno Practitioner and Athena Bronze.