Faculty Highlight: Dr. Aubrey Kelly Selected as 2025 Guggenheim Fellow
Dr. Kelly is one of two Emory faculty members selected to join the cohort of 198 distinguished individuals from across multiple fields.
She is an associate professor of psychology in Emory College who joined the faculty in August 2018. In her research, she studies how the brain allows animals to be social, from fish to birds to rodents. Currently in her lab, she and her trainees are studying spiny mice to understand what makes animals behave prosocially with strangers and form bonds with peers, as well as how the brain influences group dynamics. The Kelly Lab utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, combining techniques from behavioral ecology, neuroendocrinology, developmental neurobiology, molecular biology and genetics. This research gives a window into the primitive origins of modern human behaviors.
“I’m incredibly honored and grateful that the Guggenheim Foundation finds our behavioral neuroscience research to be a worthwhile pursuit,” says Kelly. “The fellowship will allow me to develop collaborations with experts in collective behavior and neurophysiology in Europe and the U.S. With these new tools, we will be able to use spiny mice to ask unprecedented questions about how the brain facilitates cohesion in complex societies.”
