Niamh O’Hara

Dr. O'Hara has developed cutting edge next-gen sequencing-based technology for hospitals and spent five years commercializing this technology. She has led unprecedented, large-scale metagenomics and NGS work characterizing the microbiome of ambulances across the US, hospital environments, the urine microbiome, and SARS-CoV-2 samples.

She is a research assistant professor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, completed a postdoc in health tech business at Cornell Tech (2018), a postdoc at Fordham University in Bioinformatics (2015), a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Stony Brook University (2014), and a bachelor’s at NYU (2005).

Dr. O'Hara has published peer-reviewed articles in the fields of metagenomics, genomics, evolutionary biology and ecology in top ranked journals such as Molecular Ecology, Microbiome, and Evolution. Her work has been featured in GenomeWeb, Popular Science, the Huffington Post, and WIRED. She was selected as a TedMed Hive Innovator for 2020.