Associate Professor Karen Sheppard is a Principal Research Fellow in the McArthur Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Karen completed her PhD at Monash University in Melbourne and after being awarded a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship she started her postdoctoral training in New York at Mt. Sinai Hospital and Rockefeller University. Karen returned to Melbourne as Head of Molecular Physiology at the Baker Heart Research Institute and then moved to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2004.

Karen’s research program is focused on melanoma. Her research employs molecular biology, cellular biology, immunology, and single-cell technologies coupled with clinically relevant mouse models and patient samples to understand changes in the tumour microenvironment and melanoma cell states that occur in response to therapy and upon resistance.