She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1994, where she performed research on grasp planning for articulated robot hands. Before joining CMU, Nancy was an Assistant Professor and part of the Computer Graphics Group at Brown University. She has received the NSF CAREER award for research on 'Quantifying Humanlike Enveloping Grasps' and the Okawa Research Grant for "Studies of Dexterity for Computer Graphics and Robotics."