“Science is such an exciting area to work in or be involved with at the moment”
Hello, my name is Pamela Kelly and I am an Assistant Professor in Veterinary Pathology in the UCD School of Vet. I started studying in UCD in 2000. My first degree was in Science specialising in physiology. Reading scientific papers about new understandings and hypotheses of how different diseases developed was the element of the course I enjoyed most.
After I graduated with honours I immediately embarked on a degree in Veterinary Medicine again at UCD. The physiology degree gave me a strong foundation in anatomy, physiology and histology. I felt like I had hit the ground running and was able to enjoy being a student again. The degree was hard work but always enjoyable.
I graduated in 2009 and was lucky to get an internship on the Curragh in equine practice. After my internship I stayed on and started to look for residencies in equine medicine. I went for a two-week interview to a clinic in Belgium, this really opened my eyes as to what it would be like as an equine specialist. I spent a while thinking if an equine residency was really for me. I by chance met a friend, Dr Stephen Calahan, who had just started a residency in Veterinary Pathology in UCD. I had never thought about a residency in pathology before but once he started to tell me about it, I knew this was something I would like to do. In 2011 I started a residency in pathology in UCD. After my residency I worked as a Research Officer for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and then as an Anatomical Pathologist for IDEXX UK, after which I returned to UCD as a lecturer.
During my pathology residency, my enthusiasm for research was ignited again and has never stopped. My area of passion in research is in comparative medicine, ‘One Health’, with special interest in dermatopathology and oncology. I am currently involved in three main projects in comparative medicine. The first is in dermatopathology trying to unravel the pathogenesis of canine demodicosis and examine the role of demodex mites in rosacea. The others are in comparative oncology. The comparative oncology research group is led by women including myself, Prof Amanda McCann, Principal Investigator and Senior Conway Fellow in the UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research and Dr Shirley Potter, consultant plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgeon, The Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. We currently have two PhD students investigating the role of exosomes in the development and metastasis of melanoma (canine and human) and breast cancer (feline and human).
Science is such an exciting area to work in or be involved with at the moment. Technology and our understanding of diseases is expanding and improving at such a phenomenal rate. If you are interested or thinking about becoming involved in research my advice would be to reach out to people already working in the area that you are interested in to find out more about it and see what opportunities are available. Don’t be afraid to email or talk to senior people, they were students once too.