Following receipt of a PhD in molecular engineering from MIT, she spent a year as a Harvard Center for AIDS Research Fellow before moving to Dartmouth, where she now also holds appointments in Microbiology and Immunology, Chemistry, and the Program in Quantitative Biological Sciences. The Ackerman laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of biomedical and engineering sciences: developing high throughput tools to evaluate and enhance the antibody response in disease states ranging from infection to cancer in order to aid in therapeutic antibody and vaccine design and development. These efforts aim to define and improve upon the protective mechanisms of antibodies using approaches grounded in fundamental engineering principles and utilizing protein evolution, molecular biology, and mathematical modeling.