Christopher Keneally

I am currently undertaking a PhD under the supervision of Professor Justin Brookes and Dr Stephen Kidd.

My research is concerned with the functional genetics and ecology of microbial communities controlling nutrient cycling and other biogeochemical processes in hypersaline environments. I aim to build on my previous Honours research, completed on denitrification in the degraded lagoons of the Coorong, at the Murray-Darling Basin Estuary in South Australia - an internationally important, Ramsar-listed, wetland ecosystem.
The current work aims to inform policy related to nutrient pollution and potential bioremediation of this system, while also contributing to the extant basic knowledge of similar 'extreme' systems on a broader scale - with a focus on microbial stress adaptation, early earth evolution and astrobiology.