Her research is focused on galaxy evolution, in particular the processes that help regulate star formation. She is an observational astronomer with a strong interest in spectroscopy from UV to IR wavelengths. She also an avid “data miner” and is a member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) collaboration. Before joining the faculty at the UW-Madison, Christy was a Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg Germany and a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona. She was educated at Colgate University (B.A. 1990) and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D. 2003).