Carmel Mothersill was 15 when she received her first wages packet. It contained four pounds, 10 shillings and two pence.

Still at school in Loreto High School, Beaufort, which didn't teach science (after all, it wasn't a subject that would interest women), she had embarked on a Young Scientist project. She met the director of the animal production unit at the Agricultural Institute, Dunsinea, Dublin, and told him about her interest in science. He offered her a summer job, with the aforementioned financial reward.

"I was paid as a farm aide. They had no way of paying kids. I was just old enough to be allowed to work. I started work in a histology lab, cutting sections of mice. I don't know how they put up with me." Mothersill's initial interest in science tended towards natural history, nature walks, field trips and wild flora. She was runner up in the Young Scientist of the Year competition 1968.

In UCD, she had intended to study biochemistry, but half-way through first week she went to a lecture by Carmel Humphries, a classic zoologist of the old school, and she was hooked. She studied zoology and spent summers in Dunsinea, where she did her final-year project on muscle in crab.

Dunsinea secured funding from the meat industry for three projects and Mothersill become one of the researchers studying post-mortem meat, in a bid to increase its quality. "No, I don't eat meat now. I decided if I was dealing with meat I should visit the slaughterhouse. That was an unpleasant experience. I'm now totally against the use of animals for research purposes also. When I finished my PhD I decided to do something completely different."

She put the natural history knowledge gained during her school days to good use and began to record biological sites for An Foras Forbatha. After two years outdoors, she was "climbing the walls looking for a desk job. I had to stay in Dublin for personal reasons and a job in radiobiology came up in Kevin Street. I went in as a postdoc, to a physics lab, with no experience at all. This was the time when physicists, who had taken a very simplistic view of the cell as a target, realised that there was more to it than that.

"It was very traumatic for first 18 months, being a biologist, and the only woman, working in a group of diehard physicists. I remember one person asking why I was taking up a job that belonged to man."

But she found her niche in radiobiology. Now one of Europe's pre-eminent researchers in the area, Mothersill's CV could fill this week's edition of EL. She has published 96 peer-reviewed papers in international journals. She has attracted external research funding since 1983, from EU programmes such as the agriculture and fisheries programme, the EU radiation protection programme, the EU environment programme, Forbairt, the Irish Cancer Research Advancement Board, and the Health Research Board.

Snatching time to talk to EL on a Sunday (she came back from Cambridge late on Friday night, celebrated her birthday on Saturday and left for Romania on Sunday evening), she says DIT Kevin Street is a very flexible place to work.

"From the start, I had unbelievable freedom. I did a lot of part-time teaching, to supplement my postdoc money. I thought physics to the biomedical science students as I was seen as a good person to explain physics to biologists." In 1983, she was seconded half-time from DIT to direct the research labs Luke's hospital, which employed seven people, including her husband, Dr Colin Seymour, who has co-authored many of her papers.

"I built up a research team in St Luke's but, for various reasons, it was decided that the hospital would concentrate on chemotherapy rather than radiotherapy. After a brief flit to the Nuclear Energy Board, the group moved to DIT Kevin Street. They gave us beautiful labs and financial incentive."

In 1995, Mothersill was seconded full-time to manage the Radiation Science Centre, formally established that year in DIT Kevin Street. "We have moved a lot more into the environmental end of radiation. People had become very worried about the environment and, in particular, about Sellafield. A lot of money became available to study low-dose radiation. It's still a major area of uncertainty.

"Instead of concentrating on humans, we started to look at aquatic organisms such as fish and shellfish, to see if low-dose radiation had altered the distribution and bio-diversity in the seas." They found that stresses, such as predators, were of more significance. However, they are now looking at the effects of combined exposures to chemicals and radiation pollution. "In the Irish Sea, there are traces of Sellafield and chemicals from the city. Neither agent is of a level to cause damage but the combination of the two may do so. We are putting in an application to the EU for funding, with partners in Cork, France and Estonia. We will hear in March if we are successful."

Mothersill is project supervisor for two postdoctoral fellows and eight PhD students. "I'm glad to be finishing teaching undergraduates, but I enjoy training postgrads. You get these students straight from college and you have to teach them to start thinking about research skills. They were used to having practicals set out for them in labs, and following a procedure. Now, they find that, for the first six months, none of their experiments work. You have to train them."

In the midst of all of this activity, one wonders how Mothersill manages to juggle home and work life. She has three children, Miranda (16), Rebecca - who might become a scientist - (13) and Eleanor (11). "With the two of us working in the same area, we can mange to arrange our hours to suit. We're both fully flexible and we do a lot of work at the weekends."

As for hobbies, there's an impressive list appended to the end of her CV: growing cacti, natural history and biological recording, late 20th century modern art history, landscape painting, hill-walking, breeding Chihuahuas, Buddhism, computer graphics and design. When quizzed more closely, Mothersill begins to laugh. "They're mostly aspirational. The cacti are on the windowsill. The Buddhism was a joke. I was wondering if anyone reads that far in a CV."