Dr. Mulligan specializes in environmental engineering. She has B.Eng. and M. Eng. degrees from the Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, Montréal (Québec) and a Ph.D., from the Department of Civil Engineering, at McGill University. After working at McGill and in industry for 16 years, she joined the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering at Concordia University as an Assistant Professor in 1999, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002. She was awarded the Concordia Research Chair in Environmental Engineering in 2002 and has won the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award twice (2002-2003 and 2004-2005).

She is the Director of the new Concordia Institute of Water, Energy and Sustainable Systems.  The new Institute will train students in sustainable development practices and promote research into new systems, technologies and solutions for water, energy and resource conservation. On June 26, 2012, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced that Concordia had received $ 1,643,700 in support of research and training via an Institute in Water, Energy and Sustainability. This is the first Concordia project to be awarded funding through NSERC’s Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) program.