[3] She studied chemistry at the University of Delaware, from which she graduated summa cum laude as a Eugene du Pont memorial distinguished scholar.

[4] She was a Master's student at the University of Georgia, where she was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) predoctoral fellowship, and joined Kimberly-Clark as a research scientist in 1992.

[4] She completed her doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellow.

These include the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in click chemistry to form hydrogels that degrade selectively in response to molecules present in tissues and extracellular matrix.

[7] She has developed resilin-like polypeptides (RLP), elastomeric materials that can be cross-linked using small molecules, as well as hydrogels that contain nanoparticles for targeting tumors and inflammatory conditions.