She earned her baccalaureate in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University in 2002, and her doctoral degree in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2007 exploring the self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles. Prior to joining UCSD in 2009, Andrea spent two years as a UC President’s Post-Doctoral Fellow at UC Santa Barbara uncovering new biological self-assembling systems in the optical proteins of octopus and squid. Currently, her research group focuses on the discovery and development of rational chemical frameworks for engineering solid-state nanomaterials.