Kelly is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California. She was previously a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow and Honorary Kavli Fellow at Cornell University studying spin torque dynamics in van der Waals magnets. She received her Ph.D. in physics at the Ohio State University studying information transduction between spintronic, photonic, and magnetic states in two-dimensional hybrid systems. She obtained undergraduate degree in physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.