She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2011, working in the group of Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi on the development of bioorthogonal chemistries. Upon graduation, Dr. Sletten moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an NIH postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Timothy Swager’s group where she explored dynamic fluorescence-based sensors. In 2015, Dr. Sletten began her independent career at UCLA and has established an interdisciplinary research program that leverages the tools of physical organic chemistry to create new therapeutic and diagnostic technologies. In addition to the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Dr. Sletten is a 2018 Sloan Fellow in Chemistry and currently holds the McTague Career Development Chair at UCLA.