She received an MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Her past research interests includes the ethics of maternal fetal surgery, community education and outreach in genetics and ethical, legal, and social issues around genetic research and testing and ownership views of research material. The Center for Genomics and Society is housed within the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill School of Medicine. It is supported by the ELSI Research Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Grant Number P50HG004488.