Dr Kellie Dean is a Senior Lecturer and Principal Investigator in the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland. She competed a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was post-doctoral researcher first at the Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH), University of Heidelberg, Germany, and later with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Moving to Ireland in 2005, Kellie began lecturing part-time at UCC in Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy programmes. In 2008, she was appointed as Training Coordinator of a Health Research Board (HRB)-funded PhD Scholars Programme in Cancer Biology. Since 2015 she has been leading a research group that is focused on understanding the roles of non-coding RNAs, RNA-binding proteins, RNA-protein complexes in cancer and other human diseases. Her other research interests include translational control, microproteins, phase separation, intrinsically disordered proteins and short linear motifs.

Internationally, Kellie is a working group co-leader in the EU COST Action TRANSLACORE (until 2026), a member of the TransCODE consortium and is a scientific advisor for the YWHAG Foundation. She is a member of the All-Ireland RNA Club, Irish and European Associations for Cancer Research, the Biochemical Society, and the RNA Society.