As a postdoctoral fellow with Thomas Cline and Michael Botchan at the University of California Berkeley, she initiated her research into the factors that drive transcriptional activation of the zygotic genome. Dr Harrison began her studies of transcriptional control as an undergraduate with Kevin Struhl at Harvard University and continued as a graduate student in the laboratory of Bob Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has also received a Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award and a Wisconsin Partnership Program New Investigator Award.