After growing up on Guam, she received a B.A. in Human Biology at Stanford University. Her Ph.D. work with Dr. Eric Rubin at the Harvard School of Public Health focused on mycobacterial genetics and her postdoctoral research with Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi at UC Berkeley centered on chemical probes for cell wall peptidoglycan. At UMass Amherst, Dr. Siegrist's group studies the organization of the mycobacterial cell envelope and engineers its components for translational applications.