Shannon Kelly

Shannon Kelly is the Senior Trainings Associate at the Scholars Strategy Network. Alongside the rest of the Trainings team, she helps scholars learn how to engage with policymakers and the media, develops and leads SSN trainings, and studies how to improve the use of research in public policy.

Prior to joining SSN, Shannon was a policy fellow for the Research-to-Policy Collaboration where she worked with researchers to communicate research findings to congressional offices. She also serves as a volunteer writer for BrainPost, a neuroscience blog, where she authors summaries of recent high-impact neuroscience articles for the general public.

Shannon received her PhD in Brain, Behavior, and Quantitative Science from the University of Kansas in 2022. She also holds an MA in Clinical Child Psychology. Broadly, her research focused on defining underlying neurodevelopmental mechanisms of sensorimotor and cognitive impairments associated with core clinical symptoms in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Her dissertation examined relationships between brain connectivity and inhibitory control deficits across development in ASD in order to help develop biomarkers and support treatment development efforts. 

Shannon lives in Lawrence, KS with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Attie and Zoe.