Kelsey was born in Baltimore, MD, but spent most of her childhood in Buffalo, NY. Heading to Tornado Alley, Kelsey attended The University of Tulsa in Tulsa, OK where she received her B.S. in Biochemistry. While there, she spent most of her free time as a member of the women’s rowing team and not participating in undergraduate research. However, she took one summer off from rowing and did a summer research internship in the lab of Dr. Eddie Snell at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, NY where she got her first taste of structural biology.

Following this newfound interest and heading even further west, she went to graduate school at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR where she joined the lab of Dr. Andy Karplus. Her work as a graduate student focused on using protein structure-function relationships to understand catalytic mechanism and function in a wide range of enzymes using protein X-ray crystallography as a primary technique. During her time in Oregon, she learned to love coffee, did lots of hiking, ran a science summer camp for middle schoolers, and most importantly, adopted her 30 pound Chihuahua mix, Rudy.

After receiving her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics in 2018, Kelsey set off on a solo cross-country drive with her dog to North Carolina. In Fall 2018, she joined the Waters Lab as a SPIRE Postdoctoral Scholar where her research focuses on studying epigenetic reader proteins. She enjoys baking (usually for the lab), going on walks with her dog, and wearing a lot of teal.