Laura Sheehan

Background

About Laura Sheehan

I am currently Manager of Research Administration at the University of California Los Angeles’ Department of Family Medicine. I have over 25 years of experience in academic research administration: 13 years in Family Medicine (UCLA), 10 years in Pediatric Infectious Diseases (UCLA), and three years in Civil and Environmental Engineering (University of Southern California). I am well versed in all aspects of research administration, including pre- and post-award management, management of research staff, divisional/departmental financial management, sponsor/institutional compliance, strategic planning, and budgeting. I currently supervise Family Medicine Research Unit staff and manage approximately $10M annually in extramural contract and grant funding. I have experience submitting proposals for, and then supervising the fund management of, a variety of research projects, including federal, state, private/non-profit, and industry contracts and grants. My Department is consistently ranked in the top ten Family Medicine research departments nationwide for federal research funding. I am a member of the Society of Research Administrators International and have given several talks and lead courses on a variety of research administration topics, including departmental administration, training PI’s in post-award management, proposals/pre-award basics, and managing a research unit. I have been an invited speaker for several talks at UCLA as well, teaching research proposal skills (targeted toward junior PI’s and research coordinators to learn how to build a research proposal budget and create winning research proposals) and financial basics for PI’s and research staff (e.g. how to read a financial ledger, basic accounting best practices for department personnel, etc.).