She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kansas, and was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center. Her research interests range broadly in human-computer interaction and end-user programming environments, with particular focus on web-based and multimodal user interfaces, and visual programming languages. She pursues many of those interests through research projects in the field of bioinformatics, wherein the end-users are biologists who are untrained as programmers or IT professionals. In particular, she is interested in developing and studying the use of software tools that will allow such "public programmers" to use powerful information technology to enhance their research, without the need for traditional programming training.