Deborah F. Kelly is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

. Her research makes use of cryogenic electron microscopy to better understand human development and disease. She serves as President of the

Microscopy Society of America The Microscopy Society of America (MSA) was founded in 1942 as The Electron Microscope Society of America and is a non-profit organization that provides microanalytical facilities for studies within the sciences. Currently, there are approximately 3 ...

Early life and education

Kelly attended

Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the st ...

for graduate research. She moved to the

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

for her postdoctoral research. After seven years as a research fellow at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Kelly joined the

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

School of Medicine as an assistant professor.

Research and career

In 2017, Kelly was promoted to associate professor at Virginia Tech. She moved to

as Director of the Center for Structural Oncology in 2019. Kelly combines structural and functional characterization tools to understand cellular communication. Amongst these, she has considered protein receptors. On the surfaces of cells, these receptors transmit information about cellular microenvironment to cellular nuclei. These signals can cause genes to turn off and on. Cancer cells can thrive when genes are activated inappropriately during cell division. These cancerous cells can evade conventional forms of treatment and are understood to result in the formation of malignant tumors. By determining the three-dimensional structure of these protein complexes Kelly hopes to design new therapeutic interventions. Kelly makes use of cryogenic electron microscopy to visualize these cellular interactions. Specifically, she has developed a platform ('affinity capture') that can isolate the cells which cause metastasis. Kelly developed a microchip toolkit to identify mutations in

BRCA1 Breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''BRCA1'' () gene. Orthologs are common in other vertebrate species, whereas invertebrate genomes may encode a more distantly related gene. ''BRCA1'' is a h ...

. These microchips, which she called cryo-chips, use silicon nitride to quickly identify, isolate and tether protein assemblies. When the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

started, Kelly shifted her focus to the

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

virus. Her studies demonstrated the airborne transmission of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Kelly was elected President of the

in 2022.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Deborah F. Florida State University alumni Living people Pennsylvania State University faculty Virginia Tech faculty American biomedical engineers 21st-century American educators American women educators Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American scientists