For her research contributions, Briscoe has been recognized as an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Entomological Society.

[1][2][3] In 1937, Briscoe's maternal grandmother was the only Spanish-named woman attending Colton High in San Bernardino County to graduate.

[3][4] She jumped a grade in school and found herself inspired by her new teacher who showed them fossil teeth and taught them songs to remember the name of dinosaurs.

[7] She continued her graduate studies at Harvard University,[1] specializing in evolutionary biology where her Ph.D. advisers were Naomi Pierce and Richard Lewontin.

[8] In the area of policy and higher education, Briscoe has been vocal on her support of government action to get more Latino individuals to teach science.

Her studies have also sought to elucidate the role and emergence of double gene duplication events in opsin protein expression as a function of environmental stimuli.

[6] Such double duplication events have been hypothesized to play a key role in the evolution of color vision in primates, including humans.

Her recent research collaboration between her team and that of Jorge Llorente Bousequets from the UNAM-Facultad De Ciencas was particularly productive and led to the discovery[10][11] that the Heliconius butterfly species differentially expresses one or two genes for an opsin photoreceptor which is uniquely sensitive to ultra-violet reflecting wing colors.

[15] In the area of service to the scientific community, Briscoe served as Associate Editor for the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution from 2005 until 2012.