Ailish graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2021 with a BA in Medicinal Chemistry. During her undergraduate, she completed a final year research project with the McGouran group, during which she synthesised and evaluated the activity of small molecule active groups as inhibitors of the enzyme SNM1A. 

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She joined Pfizer Grange Castle as part of their Graduate Programme, working in Quality Control. After her time in industry, she rejoined the McGouran group to pursue a PhD focused on the synthesis of a small molecule activity-based probe for deubiquiting enzymes utilising a thiole-ene mechanism.