She received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in Environmental Engineering and Science. She was the recipient of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship for her research in nitrogen isotope geochemistry. Her research combines sea-going and laboratory investigations of marine microbes, with an emphasis on marine archaea and their role in the nitrogen cycle. She is the recipient of a Sloan Foundation Early Career Fellowship in Ocean Sciences.