Her research has focused on understanding the collective mechanical properties of disordered, non-equilibrium materials including glasses, granular matter, and biological tissues using theoretical and computational tools. In particular, she is interested in understanding how interactions between single cells give rise to the observed mechanical properties of embryonic tissues. Before arriving at Syracuse, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University. She earned her Ph. D. in Soft Condensed Matter Physics working with Jean Carlson and James Langer at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2008, and received undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Virginia in 2002.