She received her Ph.D. from George Mason University in the area of Information Technology. Her research spans the areas of computer security, e-commerce, database systems and formal methods. Her research is currently supported by grants from the Airforce Office of Scientific Research, the Airforce Research Laboratory, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Science Foundation. She was the Program Chair for the 17th IFIP WG 11.3 Conference on Data and Applications Security. She is a Program Committee Member for numerous conferences in Computer Security and Database Technology, such as, ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, and Extending Database Technology.