[3] She completed her doctorate in mathematics at Stanford University in 1992, under the supervision of Donald Samuel Ornstein; her dissertation was titled Statistical Properties of Deterministic Bernoulli Flows.

[10] After postdoctoral studies at Rice University, as the only woman in the mathematics department there, she joined the Pomona College faculty in 1994.

[3] In June 2022, the college announced her appointment as the Lingurn H. Burkhead Professor of Mathematics, an endowed chair.

"[14] She also won the Mentor Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her work as a founder and director of the EDGE Foundation, a national program that encourages women to study mathematics at the graduate level.

[15] She was selected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the Class of 2021 "for her career-long efforts to invite women into our profession by learning about people’s individual journeys and driving the community to be more welcoming of diverse pathways into mathematics via her work during her AWM presidency and as co-director of the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education summer program.