Kelly Kersten, PhD

Kelly Kersten is a postdoctoral fellow in the Krummel lab, studying how tumor-associated myeloid cells affect T cell phenotype and function. Originally from the Netherlands, Kelly pursued her PhD training in the lab of Karin de Visser at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, where she was studying the role of the immune system in breast cancer metastasis and therapy responsiveness. Her work contributed to the discovery of a novel mechanism of how neutrophils and gd T cells cooperate to facilitate metastatic spread of cancer. In 2016, Kelly was awarded a Rubicon postdoctoral fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research to join the Krummel lab to dissect the role of tumor-associated macrophages in T cell exhaustion. In 2020, she was named a Parker Scholar to continue her work on this project aiming to improve current cancer immunotherapy strategies.