After earning a PhD in applied mathematics at Case Western Reserve University, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Research Training Group in Mathematical Biology at North Carolina State University. Her work in applied mathematics is in the field of inverse problems and uncertainty quantification, which involves estimating unknown system parameters using indirect observations and analyzing the changes in predicted outcomes due to changes in the inputs. She approaches the solution to these problems using Bayesian statistics. Her research has applications in the life sciences, for example in modeling the spread of infectious diseases or optimal treatment strategy for HIV drug therapy.