Shana Kelley's Biography

Shana Kelley, Professor, University of Toronto

Dr. Shana Kelley is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Kelley received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and was a NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute. The Kelley research group works in a variety of areas spanning bioanalytical chemistry, chemical biology and nanotechnology. Shana’s group has developed novel electrochemical sensors that enable ultrasensitive nucleic acids detection for clinical diagnostics, and has also investigated a new set of chemical probes that interact with intracellular nucleic acids. The Kelley labs also use nucleic acids as building blocks for complex nanomaterials assembly. Dr. Kelley’s work has been recognized with a variety of distinctions, including being named one of “Canada’s Top 40 under 40”, a NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellow, and the 2011 Steacie Prize. She has also been recognized with the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, a NSF CAREER Award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and was also named a “Top 100 Innovator” by MIT’s Technology Review. She is a founder of two molecular diagnostics companies, GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2005) and Xagenic Inc.