Hannah Magee

Hannah joined UCD in September as a PhD student in the Area52 Lab and as part of the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water. The Co-Centre aims to guide the deployment of monitoring and restoration measures to improve water quality and biodiversity across Ireland and the UK. Hannah’s research focuses on identifying ecological indicators of biodiversity success using environmental DNA (eDNA), helping to assess the effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions for biodiversity and pollution management in agricultural landscapes.

She is also collaborating with other Climate+ researchers on peatland restoration, using molecular tools to identify biological indicators of peat health and stress, which can inform better restoration, monitoring, and management of peatlands. Beyond these projects, Hannah is involved in marine eDNA research using natural sampler DNA (nsDNA) from sponges, developing a passive sampling drone for water collection, and exploring hybrid approaches that combine neural implicit models with traditional species distribution models to forecast species range shifts under climate change scenarios.