About

Kelly Ireland is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks working in Dr. Brandon Briggs lab at the University of Alaska Anchorage and co-advised by Dr. Mary Beth Leigh at UAF. Kelly studies crude oil toxicology and how oil impacts the gut microbiota. She is also interested in the toxicity of intermediates of biodegradation. Kelly also has chaired the UAA Biological Sciences Graduate Student Union since its creation in 2019.

Previously Kelly researched the impacts of crude oil on threespine stickleback development and innate immunity in Dr. Kat Milligan-Myhre’s lab for her master’s thesis and helped wrap up experiments for a paper entitled: “Early life exposure to an enteric pathogen affects organ development in threespine stickleback raised in germ-free conditions.”

As a master’s student Kelly also worked as a research fellow for the Arctic Domain Awareness Center. She helped draft a literature review for the Artic focused incidents of National Significance (Arctic IoNS) 2019 and a workshop report for the 2019 Alaskan Command Arctic Symposium. She also helped draft a chapter about offshore energy potential in the state of Alaska. The chapter is part of a larger report headed by the Institute of the North comparing Alaska and Norway, entitled the Alaska Norway Project. The final report is still in production. 

As an undergraduate researcher, Kelly worked on developing a qRT-PCR assay for innate and adaptive immune genes in stickleback. She earned an Undergraduate Research Grant through the UAA Honors College Office of Undergraduate Research, a Molly Ahlgren Scholarship from the American Fisheries Society, and a summer 2017 Alaska INBRE Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) for her research. She graduated with a double major in Biological Sciences and Journalism & Public Communications, with honors in each department, academic honors, and leadership honors from the University of Alaska Anchorage in December 2017. After graduating Kelly continued work in the lab as a Research Technician II.

In addition to research, Kelly has extensive experience in media and marketing. Kelly worked at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s student-run newspaper, The Northern Light, as an undergrad. She began as the Arts and Entertainment Editor and then lead the newspaper for two years as the Executive Editor. She has also held marketing positions at Locally Grown Properties, a restaurant management group, and the Anchorage Downtown Partnership, for nine months and a year and a half, respectively. She also held an officer position in the University of Alaska Anchorage Outdoor Recreation Club as the Marketing Director and Treasurer for two years. With the Outdoor Recreation Club she helped arrange several outdoor informational workshops and compiled a dehydrated meals cookbook from recipes created for an expedition through the Wrangell St. Elias National Park that Kelly was a part of. 

In her free time, Kelly enjoys hiking, playing hockey, and photography. She also runs an outdoor adventure website – http://www.northexposure.net