Bio: Kelly Knee received her BA in molecular biology and materials science from Alfred University in New York State, where she studied the properties of bioactive glasses on bone growth.
She received her PhD in molecular biophysics from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her thesis work with Professor Ishita Mukerji used UV-resonance Raman spectroscopy to understand the molecular assembly of sickle cell hemoglobin polymers, as well as the DNA A to B transition.
From Wesleyan she joined the lab of Jonathan King at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow. Her work in the King lab centered around understanding the structure and function of the protein folding machine TRiC/CCT and it’s homologs. That work was conducted as part of the Center for Protein Folding Machinery, an NIH funded center for translational medicine, which brought together a number of basic and translational scientists in order to better understand the role of protein chaperones in human diseases, including cataracts, Alzheimer’s disease, and Huntington’s disease.
Kelly is currently a principal scientist in the Pfizer Rare Disease Research Unit in Cambridge MA. Her work in the RDRU is focused mainly on Sickle Cell Disease, hematological disorders, and aggregation diseases.