Her graduate and dietetics education was completed at Tufts University and Frances Stern Nutrition Center in Boston. Fran is one of thefounders and a past president of Genetic Metabolic Dietitians International (GMDI) and is a co-investigator in the GMDI/Southeast Regional Newborn Screening and Genetics Collaborative (SERC) Nutrition Guideline Development Project. She has been involved in several research studies on phenylketonuria (PKU) and maternal PKU.