Dr. Cooper earned her bachelor's degree in Biology at Cornell University and her PhD from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. Her graduate research focused on how the motor neurons that control face and jaw movements develop using the zebra fish as a model species. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School where she established the three-toed jerboa as a new research model to study limb development and evolution. This led to the establishment of her independent research program in the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD where her lab continues to use the jerboa to understand mechanisms of skeletal growth, digit formation, bone fusion, and muscle maintenance.