Maria McNamara | |
---|---|
Born | 2 June 1980 45) | (age
Nationality | Irish |
Alma mater | University College Dublin |
Known for | Research on fossil preservation |
Children | 2 |
Awards | President's Prize (2003) [2] President's Prize (2005) [2] Hodson Award (2014) [2] ERC Starting Grant (2014) ERC Consolidator Grant (2020) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Palaeontology |
Institutions | University College Cork |
Thesis | Comparative taphonomy of lacustrine-hosted exceptional faunas from the Miocene of NE Spain (2007) |
Doctoral advisor | Patrick Orr |
Website | https://mariamcnamara.ucc.ie |
Maria Eithne McNamara, MRIA, is an Irish palaeontologist. She is Professor of Palaeobiology at University College Cork. [3] [4]
McNamara's research focuses on the preservation of soft tissues in the fossil record, fossil colour, and feather evolution through the use of laboratory analytical techniques, including FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, TEM, synchrotron-XRF and XANES. Furthermore, controlled laboratory-based taphonomic experiments that simulate aspects of the fossilization process are done to illustrate how information on biological structures and chemistry is lost during decay and diagenesis, and help to predict what sort of information is likely to preserve in fossils.
McNamara obtained her undergraduate degree in Earth Sciences at the University of Galway in 2002. In 2007 she was awarded a PhD by University College Dublin (UCD) in 2007 with a thesis focusing on taphonomy. [3] After a two year postdoc at UCD, McNamara spent a year as a geopark geologist at the Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark. [5] She returned to academia in 2009 after being awarded a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. [5] In 2012 McNamara did further postdoctoral research on feather coloration at the University of Bristol, and in 2013 she was given the position of lecturer at University College Cork (UCC). [3]
In 2016 McNamara was one of the eight women to be painted by Blaise Smith in honour of being the recipient of European Research Council Starter Grants. [6] The painting was exhibited at the United Nations headquarters and is now on permanent exhibition at the Royal Irish Academy. [7] McNamara became professor at UCC in 2020. [3]
In 2020 McNamara became one of only a handful of Irish scientists to be awarded a second European Research Council grant, with the award of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant.
McNamara is strongly active in the area of public engagement of science and has hosted exhibits, science festivals, and conferences. She runs a major public engagement project focussed on the fossils of Ireland, called Ireland's Fossil Heritage, that has directly reached over 1000 schoolchildren, and over 30,000 members of the public, in Ireland. [8] [9] She has also appeared on RTE's documentary The Island. [10]
In 2024 under the Science Foundation Ireland Discover programme, McNamara was one of the awardees and granted €300,000 to continue the expansion of Ireland's Fossil Heritage project. [11]
She was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2024. [12]