Dr David Dowling completed his undergraduate degree in Microbiology in Trinity College Dublin before moving to the National University of Ireland in Galway. In Galway he completed his PhD on Rhizobium molecular genetics under the supervision of Prof. LK Dunican. He spent one year as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne Germany, before moving to the University of Geneva Switzerland where he worked in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology. In 1989 he won an EMBO fellowship to work on the genetics of PCB biodegradation in the Federal Institute of Biotechnology, Braunschweig, Germany. In 1990 Dr Dowling moved to University College Cork as a senior research scientist in the BioMerit Research centre in the Department of Microbiology. He joined the Academic staff at SETU (IOT Carlow) in 1995 as lecturer in biotechnology and established his research group focused on the optimisation of plant microbial interactions for phytoremediation of soil pollutants and the development of plant growth promotion bacteria for sustainable crop production. He has successfuly supervised many PhD, MSc and Post docs within his research group. His group has won considerable amounts of funding from National and European funding agencies to support research in the area, More recently he is interested in research on the use of digital technologies to facilitate Science students' learning and assessment in practical settings. He was a cofounder of Talam Biotech Ltd, a campus spin-out company dedicated to the commercialisation of ennvironmental biotechnology for phytoremediation and sustainable crop production under heavy metal stress. Currently he is the Head of Faculty of Science at SETU (Carlow campus) , this is a multidisciplinary Science faculty with 100 staff and over 1200 students.