She is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).
Her research focused on developing and using a technique called spectral domain phase microscopy, a new method for studying cellular dynamics.
[3] She was also named a John T. Chambers Fellow at the Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communication Systems, and was a recipient of the Graduate Student of the Year Award from the National Society of Black Engineers in 2007.
[4] Bowden was named an Arthur H. Guenther Congressional Fellow in 2008 by SPIE and Optica, spending a year working for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
[10] In 2018, she joined Vanderbilt University as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and was named the 2018 Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor's Faculty Fellow.