[2] After earning her bachelor's degrees, Quave started her ethnobotany fieldwork in southern Italy between 2001 and 2003, before pursuing a doctoral program in biology at Florida International University.

Under Dr. Bradley C. Bennett's guidance, she completed her doctoral dissertation in 2008, titled "An ethnopharmacological approach to multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureas: Evaluation of Italian Plants used in the Traditional Healing of Skin Disease.

Quave's work during her first post-doctoral fellowship focused on the significant biofilm-inhibiting activity of 10 individual botanical extracts from unique species of plants, something she believes could be utilized in new drug therapies.

[3] Another major project of Quave's has been studying quorum-sensing inhibiting (QSI) activity in medicinal plants that prevent bacterial cells from effectively communicating, colonizing, and releasing toxins.

Aside from receiving FDA approval, there are the added difficulties of isolating the active compound and understanding the complex pharmacology of multiple extracts, if pursuing a mixture for increased efficacy.