As a freshman at University of California at Berkeley, she originally wished to major in chemical engineering until she discovered lac operon in biology class.
After earning her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, Wiggs was awarded the Pearl and Martin Silverstein academic scholarship in Health Sciences and Technology to attend the Harvard Medical School.
[4] She shortly thereafter joined the Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital in 1992 and eventually became co-director of the HMS Ophthalmology Glaucoma Center of Excellence and director of the genetic testing lab.
She was promoted to the Paul Austin Chandler Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard,[5] and was inducted into the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis for her research on glaucoma.
[11] Later, Wiggs was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for her research in the field of ocular genetics.