She obtained her Ph.D in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California at Davis in 2001. Prior to arriving in the University of Washington, she taught in the City College of New York for six years. She has published in a number of transportation and urban planning journals, including Transportation Research Part A, Part B, Transportation, Environment and Planning A, Urban Studies, and Transport Geography. Her current research interest is to understand human movements in time and space. She focuses on characterizing key characteristics of these movements, identifying regular and irregular patterns, and charting out the lifecycle of these patterns over time.