Although born in Québec, Canada, she has now spent more than half of her life in the USA. After moving to the states, and following several years hiatus from academia, she returned to school while working full time. She eventually graduated from the Florida State University in 2002 with a Ph.D. in Physics. After the completion of her degree, she accepted two postdoctoral positions: one in Australia doing research in theoretical hadronic physics, and the other at the University of Virginia where she used her physics and modeling background doing computational neuroscience. She spent three years as a visiting professor of physics at James Madison University in Virginia before joining the faculty at Stetson. Education