Affiliation: Associate Professor in Biochemistry, School of biological and Chemical Sciences, University of Galway, Director Blood Cancer Network Ireland, Director Blood Cancer Biobank Ireland, Principal investigator Cancer Niche Laboratory. Career information Prof. Szegezdi received her PhD in medical science in 2000 studying cell death signalling at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She then joined the Cell Stress and Apoptosis Research laboratory led by Prof. Afshin Samali at the National University of Ireland, Galway (now University of Galway) in 2001 to study stress-induced cell death in heart and pancreatic cells. In 2010 she established her own research group as a Science Foundation Ireland Starting Investigator (SIRG) and an Irish Cancer Society Research Fellow focusing on how the tissues surrounding cancer cells protect the tumour from chemotherapeutics. She took up a university lecturer position in the Discipline of Biochemistry, University of Galway in 2011. In 2017, she received a Research Lectureship position in Cancer Biology. She is an associate professor in Biochemsitry since 2021. She directs Blood Cancer Network Ireland, co-PI in the Centre for Research Training in Genomics Data Science and co-ordinates the H2020-funded INTEGRATE programme within the Genomics CRT. She is also co-PI in Precision Oncology Ireland and Genome of Ireland.

Research in Dr Szegezdis laboratory focuses on death receptor signal transduction and how death receptor signalling shapes the interaction between the tumour and its microenvironment. In this research, she co-ordinated the H2020-RISE research consortium, DISCOVER and co-PI in the follow-on Horizon Europe project, CHIRON.

The second research area of her laboratory is blood caner research, especially acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma and the mechanism of drug resistance mediated by the bone marrow stroma, where these leukemia cells reside. In this research, she has established and leads a national biobank collecting blood cancer patient samples.