She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering and is recognized for her work on gene finding and genome sequence analysis. Her past research led to the development of several open-source software systems that were essential for the annotation of key species such as Plasmodium falciparum, Arabidopsis thaliana, rice, Aspergillus fumigatus, Cryptococcus neoformans, and several others. Her papers have more than 16,000 citations, ranking her among the top 1% most highly cited researchers in her field over the past decade, according to a 2014 ranking by Thomson Reuters. Dr. Pertea has recently developed and taught a programming course specifically designed for Johns Hopkins University’s graduate students who have a deep understanding of biology, but not a computer science or mathematics background.