Kelly Peper was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. From a young age, she knew she wanted to work with animals; however, she was only exposed to animals at the zoo and Illinois State Fair. Growing up, she was active in sports and participated in basketball, softball, and dance.

For her undergraduate career, she attended the University of Missouri-Columbia and majored in Animal Sciences. While at Mizzou, she worked at Foremost Dairy Farm as a student worker. During this time, she also worked at the University of Missouri-Columbia Small Animal Veterinary Teaching Hospital as an after-hours crew member. She also completed two equine internships as an undergraduate.

After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2008, she began working for Seaboard Foods in southwest Kansas as a Manager in Training. After training, she became the manager of a 2,700 head sow farm in Guymon, Oklahoma.

In 2010, she began attending Kansas State University to pursue a Master’s degree in Swine Nutrition under Dr. Bob Goodband. During this time, she ran a series of growth performance studies to evaluate the effects of sorghum dried distiller’s grains with solubles on nursery pig performance, on finishing pig growth performance and meat quality, and on lactating sow and litter performance. Next, she came to Illinois to earn her Ph.D. with Dr. Stein. Her dissertation research focused on determining the effect of place of origin on the nutritional value of soybean meal.

Dr. Peper now works in Swine Technical Services at Ralco Animal Nutrition, a vitamin-mineral premix company.

Curriculum Vitae (.pdf format)

Read more about Dr. Peper's current job and how her work in the Stein Lab helps her in her career: Careers in Animal Nutrition: Shelly Tiede and Kelly Peper