She is also the co-director of the GAMMA Research Group at UNC. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1988, 1991, and 1993 from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining UNC, she was a program manager of discrete mathematics and computer science in the Mathematical and Computer Sciences Division of the U.S. Army Research Office, and an assistant professor in the Computer Science departments at the Naval Postgraduate School and North Carolina A&T State University.