Her first exposure to scientific research was as a high school student in Bethesda, MD, when she wrote software to analyze early databases of protein structure and build GUI for a compartmental modelling simulation suite in the Laboratory of Mathematical Biology at the National Cancer Institute, which was headed by Dr. Mones Berman. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at Brown University, she returned to the NIH to extend her research knowledge to neuroscience. At NIH, she analyzed intracellular calcium dynamics in secretory cells in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology with Dr. Jefferey L. Barker. Her disseration research with Dr. Jonathan J. Art at The University of Chicago concerned the ion channels required for hearing. She started to work with the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a postdoc first with Shawn Lockery at the University of Oregon and later with Martin Chalfie at Columbia University.