regal was raised in duluth, minnesota and attended lawrence university . on a graduate fellowship to cu boulder from the hertz foundation , regal pioneered experimental techniques for ultracold fermi gases under the supervision of deborah s. jin . her phd thesis, which showed a crossover between bose-einstein condensation and superconductivity using an ultracold gas of atomic fermions, was awarded the aps division of amo physics (damop) thesis prize in 2007 .