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Dr. Dior Kelley joins GDCB faculty

Dior Kelley
Professor Kelley

GDCB would like to welcome Dr. Dior Kelley, who joined the GDCB faculty in January as an Adjunct Assistant Professor.  Dr. Kelley received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of California Davis.  She is developing a program of independent and collaborative research that investigates how auxin signaling modules control diverse development processes in Arabidopsis, a plant model system.  Her research leverages and integrates large-scale data sets and is being conducted in the Carver Co-Lab, where she is working with two excellent plant scientists and faculty mentors, Professors Steve Howell and Diane Bassham.

“Growing up I lived in many places,” Dr. Kelley said, “including Hawaii, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.  Science and art were my favorite subjects in school, so it was a natural fit for me to study Chemistry (B.S) and Art at UC Santa Cruz and Plant Biology (PhD) at UC Davis.  My love of developmental genetics first started when I got a lab assistant job as an undergraduate in a lab that worked on Arabidopsis floral development. While I have studied many aspects of plant development, my current research on auxin signaling allows me to bridge different approaches and processes which is very rewarding. Auxin was first studied by Charles and Francis Darwin and I always find it inspiring to work on a plant hormone with such a rich history and exciting future.” Asked what she enjoys doing when she is not working in the lab, she said, “I love to make jams and pickles, run and do something creative.”