Catherine Mageeney, a senior member of Sandia’s technical staff in bioengineering and biotechnology, has expertise in phage biology and genetics with broad applications and implications for scientific research. Phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, are the most numerous and diverse biological-organism in Earth’s biosphere. With approximately 1031 existing phages to be identified and studied, there is no shortage to identify, characterize, sequence, and analyze.

Mageeney’s phage research bridges several related areas of bioscience, including not only infectious diseases, but also climate study, biomanufacturing and bioenergy. She sees the plethora of phages “as a toolkit for solving complex biological problems by delivering useful genetic material to alter or kill unwanted bacterial pathogens.”

Mageeney has spent years in this field of discovery science since being introduced as a Cabrini College undergraduate, and she currently leads a team of undergraduate students in the Applied Bioscience Lab at Sandia/California.