She received her Master’s degree in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) at University of Cincinnati and obtained her PhD. degree in Geography at University of Utah. Before joining UCF, she spent three years on the geography faculty at Auburn University. Her primary research areas include Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics, environmental health, and economic/urban geography. Her research involves topics on socioeconomic inequalities, health and health care disparities, childhood obesity, retail location analysis and planning, water quality and environmental pollution, as well as geospatial modeling.