She has a Ph.D. in Geosciences from Princeton University. Her dissertation focused on biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen in low-oxygen marine environments in Chesapeake Bay and the Arabian Sea. For her post-doctoral work, first at Princeton and then at Boston University, she continued her exploration of the nitrogen cycle in the Sargasso Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and Cape Cod. Currently, her work at Wright State focuses on hypereutrophic Lake Erie, Lake Okeechobee, and Lake Taihu in China, as well as local research on the Great Miami River and small lakes.