[1] She earned a Ph.D. from the same university in 1975, under the supervision of Shmuel Kantorovitz, with a dissertation entitled Semi-Groups of Unbounded Linear Operators in Banach Space.
[1][3] She began her teaching career at Tufts University then spent a year as a fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.
[1][5] She has served on the Commission on Physical Science, Mathematics, and Applications of the United States National Research Council.
[6] She and Sylvia Bozeman organized the Spelman-Bryn Mawr Summer Mathematics Program for female undergraduate students from 1992 to 1994.
[2] In 1998, Hughes received the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.