Sheila is a Professor in the School of Physics. She is a leading gamma-ray expert in Ireland and her interests include, their afterglows and host galaxies, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and developing instrumentation for the next generation gamma-ray space mission.

After completing her PhD, Sheila worked as a Research Fellow in the European Space Agency (ESA) in The Netherlands focusing on high-energy observations of extragalactic sources. In 2006, she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union and moved to the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial physics (MPE) in Munich. While at MPE, she joined the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team and continues to be an active team member. The GBM is an instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Sheila is a member of the EIRSAT-1 team, Ireland's first satellite. This is a 2U CubeSat being developed as part of the European Space Agency's Fly Your Satellite programme and has been designed, built, tested, and will be operated by UCD students supported by staff. Sheila is the Science Lead & Academic Lead for GMOD.

She was recently awarded a Science Foundation Ireland Career Development Award to work with NASA to develop a gamma-ray detector suitable for use in space. Additionally, she was co-founder and CTO of Parameter Space Ltd, a UCD spin-out company working on European Space Agency contracts. She is currently the principal investigator of a Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland award in the area of wind energy and a European Space Agency contract on the future of on-board data processing.

Sheila is a champion for women in STEM and took the lead in chairing the first Women in STEM group in UCD 10 years ago. She was UCD's academic representative on the national HEA committee that led to Ireland 'joining' Athena SWAN and led UCD's Institute of Physics Juno Committee to a bronze award.