She studied developmental psychology and received her PhD titled “Familial developmental factors of Turkish immigrant and German preschool children” from the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) in 2008. From 2009-2010 she worked as a postdoc with Prof. Dieter Wolke at the University of Warwick (UK) and then returned to Germany to work at the University Hospital in Bonn (Germany) and the Ruhr-University Bochum until July 2015. Her research is interdisciplinary and often combines multiple methods such as behavioral, cognitive, academic, neurological, and physiological assessments to understand long-term developmental mechanisms of vulnerability and resilience in individuals facing socio-cultural and/or biological adversity.