She earned her B.A. in both chemistry and mathematics from Smith College and her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in theoretical chemistry. As an undergraduate at Smith college she participated in research in both organic and experimental physical chemistry, but switched to theoretical chemistry in graduate school, where she focused on developing a novel method for computing excited states of large helium clusters. Before coming to Fresno, Dr. Closser also did post-doctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and crossed over into the realm of theoretical condensed matter physics.