Her research explores the ways in which plants protect themselves from diseases. Her work has been published in the Journal of Bacteriology and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and has received major grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Fulbright Commission, and the Teagle Foundation. She teaches courses in microbiology; bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics; cellular regulatory mechanisms; genetics; and environment, immunity, and infectious disease. She received her B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.