Maria Chernyakova was awarded a Ph.D. in Physics from Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia (2000). After postdoctoral work at Integral Science Data Center (Switzerland) and at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies(DIAS) (Ireland) she took up an academic position in the School of Physical Sciences at Dublin City University (DCU), where she gives lectures about stellar physics, astronomical techniques and cosmology.

Her main scientific interests lie in the area of High Energy Astrophysics. In her work she combines a theoretical approach of the modelling of sources with the analysis of experimental data. During her career she has organized a number of multiwavelength observational campaigns, including Radio, Optical, X-ray and very high energies (FERMI), and was granted with more than thousand of observational hours at ground based and space based observatories (SAAO telescopes, XMM-Newton, Chandra, SWIFT, INTEGRAL, Fermi).