[3] She has been the director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, Neuroscience Collaborations since September 2021.

[4] Martin majored in English and American Language and Literature at Harvard University, earning her B.A.

[citation needed] She spent two years volunteering with the Peace Corps in Zaire before resuming her post-graduate education.

Her graduate thesis work investigated the nuclear transport of influenza virus ribonucleoproteins in the laboratory of Ari Helenius.

At Columbia University, she made the seminal discovery that a single axonal branch can be the substrate for synaptic plasticity associated with learning and memory.