Dr. Kelly Seagraves
Postdoctoral Fellow Princeton Neuroscience Institute
PhD in Zoology University of Cambridge
When Dr. Kelly Seagraves was young, she was fascinated by her pets, wanting eventually to become a wildlife biologist or zoologist. As she progressed through school, eventually studying molecular and cellular biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, her love of animal behavior remained constant, deepened only by her love of science and research. In college, Kelly knew she wanted to be at the bench: at the end of her first year, she “literally emailed every PI on campus to ask to do research.” Her quest to find a lab was successful, and while she enjoyed doing biology research, it wasn’t until she participated in a summer program at the Janelia Research Campus between her junior and senior year that she realized neuroscience was for her. She worked in the lab of Dr. Kristin Branson, who studied mouse social behavior, and “that was it – that was what did it.”
Throughout her Ph.D. work, Kelly was able to approach animal behavior from multiple angles, model organisms – and even continents. Kelly ultimately chose to pursue a Ph.D. with Dr. Branson at Janelia Research Campus, which was partnered with Cambridge University at the time. At Janelia, Kelly worked with Roian Egnor to study how animals change their behavior when they have an audience, regardless of whether or not they are interacting with them. “If you’re at a cocktail party, you may act very differently if your mother is there -- just knowing that she is in the room and might hear you is enough to get you to change your behavior.” For a year, Kelly lived abroad and worked with Dr. Berthold Hedwig at Cambridge, shifting gears to study the biophysics of sound localization. She was specifically interested in the sensory basis of social communication, examining how crickets use different properties of sounds to find mates.
Kelly followed her love of animal behavior to Dr. Sam Wang’s lab at Princeton University, where she is using computational methods to delve even deeper into mouse social behavior. She focuses now on observational learning, searching for precise neural correlates of this phenomenon. In addition to her research, she is invested in providing mentorship opportunities to students both within and outside of Princeton. She is involved in the Princeton undergraduate neuroscience lab course, where she teaches undergraduate students neuroscience techniques, including electrophysiology, EEG, and fMRI. Kelly also teaches a similar course for graduate students and postdocs.
Kelly is also heavily involved in the Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI) at Princeton. The project’s goal is to reduce incarceration rates in the state of New Jersey by providing post-secondary education in state and federal prisons. Kelly team teaches college math and biology (with a lab!) to students in a New Jersey Federal Facility, where she goes above and beyond for her students to not only help them learn the material, but also provide them support outside of the classroom. She started and currently runs the program’s office hours and tutoring program, where students can talk to instructors outside of class, in a less structured and more informal way. Through this program, students can come to her with questions ranging from needing more explanation on meiosis to requesting information on how their credits will transfer after their release dates. Kelly’s experience with the PTI was pivotal in driving her to recognize the need for policy reform, as well as strengthening her teaching and mentorship skills.
In all of her mentoring activities - from teaching at Princeton and at the federal facility to working with younger trainees in her own lab - Kelly strives to provide similar encouragement to her mentees. She fosters critical thinking and careful experimental design, but is also frank about not knowing all of the answers. Both within the facility and at Princeton, she tries to advocate for her students’ self-exploration: “I want my students to try to think about all opportunities that are available to them, really assess what they would be happy with, and [remind them that] they can do it.” She also encourages students to have a work/life balance, a concept she feels she needs to emphasize after observing both her own and others’ hesitancy to take time off. She reiterates to her students the importance of being people outside of the lab, and maintains her own hobbies to model this behavior. In addition to her involvement with the PTI, she reads and writes outside of lab -- and fosters cats. “They do a lot of behaving in my living room,” she reports with a laugh.
As Kelly thinks beyond her postdoc, she is considering several different paths. She is not yet sure whether she wants to focus on research or on teaching, and her experience working with inmates has even led her to consider moving into the non-profit or policy sectors to work for justice reform. However, whatever future she chooses, one thing is certain: Kelly wants mentorship to be a cornerstone of her career.
Listen to Dakota’s interview with Kelly on August 13, 2019 below!
