I received my B.A. in Chemistry from Berea College, KY. I went on to obtain my PhD in Biochemistry from Rice University, TX under the mentorship of Dr. John Olson and Dr. George N. Phillips. While pursuing my graduate research as a wet lab biochemist on hemoglobin assembly, I ran into research questions involving rapid changes the molecules were undergoing, questions that I discovered could not be addressed by just applying experimental techniques. This led me to pursue my post-doctoral training with a focus in computational chemistry first with Dr. David Case at Rutgers University, and later on with Dr. Martin Gruebele at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.