Rebecca L. Kelly, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Rebecca L. Kelly, Ph.D., M.P.H., joined the Integrative Tumor Epidemiology Branch as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2023. Dr. Kelly earned her Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology from the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, in Rochester, Minnesota, in April 2022, under the mentorship of Dr. Larry Karnitz. Her doctoral thesis explored the regulation of DNA replication origin firing by the intra-S phase checkpoint, which is modulated by small molecule inhibitors of Chk1, a potential cancer treatment. In May 2023, Dr. Kelly earned an M.P.H. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, where she investigated the molecular epidemiology of breast cancers from genetically cancer-predisposed individuals.

As a Cancer Prevention Fellow at NCI, Dr. Kelly is interested in using her background in molecular signaling to explore the etiology of cancer in genetically predisposed individuals and develop cancer prevention strategies for those unique populations. In DCEG, Dr. Kelly is working with Mitchell Machiela Sc.D., M.P.H., Earl Stadtman investigator, to characterize early somatic events in healthy cells and the contribution of germline and environmental factors to their clonal expansion and potential progression to cancer.