She studied at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania before coming to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a postdoctoral fellowship under the guidance of Drs. Joseph Hall and John Grose. Dr. Buss in involved in a wide range of studies of human hearing including normative studies in both children and adults, as well as experiments on the effects of hearing loss in listeners who make use of hearing aids or cochlear implants. Collaboration with Dr. Lori Leibold focuses on better understanding the susceptibility to and release from masking in early development and the effects of non-linear frequency compression technology in pediatric hearing aid users.