She received her B.S. in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Biology from Yale University. She was the Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Dr. Frederick M. Ausubel at Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of the Harvard Medical School. As a postdoc, she began studying plant-microbe interactions and discovered immune signaling roles for an ancient class of plant chemicals. She joined the faculty at Yale University in 2011.