Professor Shanahan was educated in Australia and obtained a PhD in Genetics from the University of Adelaide. She began research in the field of cardiovascular medicine in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Cambridge UK. From 1995-2004 she was a British Heart Foundation Lecturer and in 2005 became a BHF Senior Fellow in the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge. In 2007 she left Cambridge to take up the Chair of Cellular Signalling in the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences at King’s College London and is currently Theme Lead for Vascular Biology.