She received her PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMAB). She did postdoctoral fellowships at the MRC Human Genetics Unit (Edinburgh, Scotland) and at the Salk Institute (La Jolla, CA), where she studied human and Drosophila chromosome and centromere biology. Prior to joining the Duke faculty in 2005, she was an Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomics at Boston University School of Medicine. Her lab's research interests include centromere organization and function, chromatin dynamics, and formation and behavior of human chromosomal abnormalities.