She received her Ph.D. in political science from The George Washington University. Her research and teaching interests lie in international security and U.S. foreign policy. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, International Studies Perspectives, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Survival, and The Washington Quarterly. She is currently completing a book project exploring how leaders decide to use preventive military force as a counter-proliferation strategy against adversarial nuclear programs.