She received her BS in Materials Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1996, and MS and PhD in Engineering from Brown University in 1998 and 2002, respectively. From 2001-2005 she was research faculty at the University of Illinois. She joined as an Assistant Professor in 2005 and became an Associate Professor in 2012. She is currently a part-time faculty member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and has affiliations with the Institute for Genomic Biology, the Department of Bioengineering, and holds a Visiting Professor appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Washington University in St. Louis.