She attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry. Following a National Science Foundation (NSF) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (2006), Dr. Sanchez returned to receive her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). She then pursued a NIH Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Postdoctoral Fellowship in Dr. Pieter Dorrestein‘s lab at UC, San Diego (UCSD).