Originally from Sheffield, England, she received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she investigated the role of viral tRNA-like molecules in MHV-68 infection. Upon completing her PhD she moved to Dr. David Knipe's laboratory at Harvard Medical School to investigate the chromatin control of HSV-1 lytic replication and latency. She then moved to Dr. Mohanish Deshmukh's laboratory in the Neuroscience Center at UNC Chapel Hill, where she utilized a primary neuronal model of HSV-1 latency to investigate how neuronal stress triggers reactivation. She was recruited to UVa in 2016, where her lab investigates the unique properties of neurons that result in HSV gene silencing during latency and how the virus escapes gene silencing to permit reactivation.