She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1975 and her PhD. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1986. She is the head of UC's B.S. in Computer Engineering Program and the coordinator of the Preparing Future Faculty in Engineering Program. Her research interests include embedded systems and VLSI, intelligent embedded systems, software and systems engineering, computational biology and synthetic biology, agent based modeling and simulation, mentoring, and diversity in science and engineering.