She obtained her first degree in mathematics at Lycée Descartes in Rabat.[1] She had to argue the case then with her father to be a girl who would leave conservative Morocco to study further. She says that Neil Armstrong's achievements and a high school teacher inspired her.[2] She then went to study in Grenoble in France where she obtained her doctorate in physics at the Laboratoire de Physique subatomique et cosmologie which was part of the Joseph Fourier University. In 1982 she returned to Rabat.[1] Then she leads a research team for the ATLAS experiment at CERN.