Sally's main research interests are the ecology, evolution, systematics, and conservation of microfungi. She completed a PhD at Flinders University in 1997 on the taxonomy and ecology of wood decay fungi, examining indirect effects of multi-species interactions. In 1998 she moved to Hong Kong as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong where worked on freshwater and marine fungi. Her research took her to various peat swamp forests, mangroves and streams in Borneo where she was a visiting fellow at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam. While studying the competition between microfungi on wood in aquatic ecosystems as well as their succession and natural distribution she also discovered new taxa of microfungi and became increasingly concerned about the threats to aquatic fungal diversity. Her research now involves documenting microfungi from marine and freshwater habitats around Australia. This includes the identification of ascomycetes, culturing, DNA extraction, PCR for DNA sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis. Sally maintains a strong interest in fungal conservation.

Sally is currently exploring the diversity of Australian marine and freshwater microfungi.