Her early research studied quantum field theory in curved space, including a treatment of rotating frames of reference.
More recently, her work has focused on applications of the octonions to the theory of fundamental particles.
She was a graduate student under Bryce DeWitt at the University of Texas, where she received her Ph.D. in 1984.
Her dissertation, titled The Vacuum in the Presence of Electromagnetic Fields and Rotating Boundaries, contained two separate results: a treatment of the gravitational Casimir effect in rotating reference frames, and a discussion of superradiance in both gravitational and electromagnetic contexts.
[1][2] The latter work revealed a physically important sign error in the treatment of the electromagnetic case in standard textbooks.