Date: Tuesday 3rd March 2026
Time: 15.30 – 16.30
Venue: Cancer Academy, Cancer institute, University College London
72 Huntley Street, London WC1E 6BT
Join us to learn from Dr Kelly Sheehan‑Rooney on what funders are looking for and hear first hand from Dr Ivana Bjedov on her journey to becoming a CRUK Fellow.
Dr Kelly Sheehan‑Rooney is a research funding and training specialist with extensive experience supporting early‑career researchers. She is currently a Strategic Research Development Manager at King’s College London, where she works across the cancer research community to advance strategic initiatives, strengthen collaborations with partners such as the CRUK City of London Centre and the Radiation Research Centre, and support major funding efforts.
Previously, Kelly led the EMBO Fellowship Programme, overseeing its €24M annual portfolio and supporting more than 550 postdoctoral fellows each year, alongside developing new schemes and strategic projects that enhanced global early‑career researcher development. She has also held fellowship and training roles at Imperial College London and Cancer Research UK.
Dr Ivana Bjedov earned a BSc degree in Molecular Biology form University of Zagreb, Croatia. She did her PhD at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, in the laboratory of Prof. Miroslav Radman, where she learned about DNA repair in E. coli. Her interest in ageing research started when she moved to University College London, where she was a postdoctoral EMBO fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Dame Linda Partridge.
Her postdoc was focused on understanding how to manipulate the mTOR pathway with rapamycin to improve health and extend lifespan in Drosophila. She joined UCL Cancer Institute upon obtaining ERC Starting Grant and her laboratory is interested in protein synthesis and DNA repair. Recently she became part of the CRUK RadNet City of London network and was awarded a CRUK Senior Fellowship
Register by Friday 27th February 2026
