She received her PhD in Neuroscience from Wake Forest University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wake Forest's Center for Human Genomics, Diabetes Research Center. Her research interests lie in the interplay between physical health and brain function. She is currently leading several studies looking at the effects of exercise and weight loss interventions on the brain. She is also partnering with the Wake Forest School of Medicine's Laboratory for Complex Brain Networks to investigate the effects of exercise and weight loss on the architecture of complex brain networks.