She was born into a Punjabi Khatri family who emigrated to the United States from India in the 1960s and 1970s for higher education opportunities.
[1] In 1993, Bhalla worked as a summer intern with John Kornblum in the New York City Public Health Laboratories.
[2] One summer during her undergraduate studies, Bhalla researched in Teri Melese's lab at Columbia University where she learned of her interest in cell biology.
Bhalla researched meiosis in C. elegans during her postdoctoral studies in Abby Dernburg's lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
[1][2] Bhalla worked as an assistant professor from 2008 to 2015 in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at University of California, Santa Cruz.