She received her MS and PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Her MS thesis investigated a predictor-corrector time-marching algorithm to achieve accurate results in less time using a finite element-based shallow water model; her dissertation focused on several algorithmic improvements to the same finite element-based shallow water model, ADCIRC. Her dissertation was awarded an Honorable Mention from the Universities Council on Water Resources and she was a U.S. Department of Education GAANN Fellow. She has published papers in the area of computational fluid dynamics.