Dr. Melody Kelly

As a child, there was only one thing that Dr. Melody Kelley loved more than science, and that was talking about it. One might even say that her career as a scientist and scholar was destined. But growing up in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan presented its fair share of adversities. Ultimately, she graduated from Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School and Wayne State University (Magna Cum Laude) with her first degree in Chemistry.  During her tenure as a graduate student at The University of Alabama, she has been a recipient of many honors, including the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the UNCF-Merck Graduate Fellowship, the Ford Fellowship, and the Southern Regional Education Board Doctoral Fellowship. It is through these affiliations that Dr. Renee Horton came into her life as a valuable mentor and friend. Dr. Kelley received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2014. Her research interests center on the application of chromogenic materials to cosmetic science. Additionally, she aims to use cosmetic chemistry as a platform to recruit and retain underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines. She is currently a faculty member at Lawson State Community College, where she gets to research best practices for adjunct instructors at 2-year colleges as well as talk about science.