Recent books include a new guide to sustainable living, Drive Like a Woman, Shop Like a Man (New Island, 2009), and Lab Coats and Lace, a collection of biographies of inspiring Irish women scientists, which she edited for WITS (2009).

Over the past 20 years Mary has had numerous popular science series on RTE radio and Lyric FM, including The Quantum Leap, the Goldilocks World and Left Brain, Right Brain.  She has also written frequently for The Irish Times and numerous other publications, and edited Technology Ireland for a decade.

Each month she publishes a guide to what’s on and what’s worth reading and seeing. The Science@Culture bulletin has been on the go for over a dozen years now, and is widely read by a vast cross-section of people interested in science and related events.  Read the latest edition, and subscribe to the bulletin here.

Ingenious Ireland (2002), her guide to Ireland’s fascinating scientific heritage and curiosities won a number of awards. She also edited two collections of biographies of Irish women scientists and pioneers – Stars, Shells and Bluebells (1997), and Lab Coats and Lace (March 2009).

Before all that, she was a statistical geneticist with the agricultural research agency (An Foras Talúntais, now Teagasc) . . . but that’s another story!

And way before that there was a degree in genetics, followed by an MSc in statistics (both at Trinity College, Dublin), and somewhere along the way a graduate diploma in journalism.

Affiliations, memberships:

Irish Science & Technology Journalists Association: member, former president

WITS:  founding member, first chairperson

RIA Committee for the History of Irish Science: member

Irish Council for Bioethics: former member of the first council

Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland: member, former council member

Association of Independent Radio Producers Ireland: member

NUJ & Irish Writers Union: member