Dr. Kelly earned her B.S. in Medical Technology and PhD in Immunology at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, where she worked on the role of T cell subsets in germinal center formation. She then served as a junior faculty member in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Unviersity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She focused on mucosal immunology and concentrated her studies on immune responses in the reproductive tract. Dr. Kelly is actively involved in graduate, undergraduate and medical student education. She is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award and past chair of the Immunology Division for the American Society of Microbiology.