I was born and raised in Bulgaria. I moved to the US to attend Vassar College, where I obtained my bachelor's degrees in Biochemistry and German Studies (2002-2006). From there, I relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area for my PhD and postdoctoral training. As a graduate student in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford (2006-2012), I worked with Dr. Patrick Brown to develop high-throughput approaches to study RNA genomics and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. I then switched fields (but didn’t move too far geographically!) to concentrate on the function of mammalian GPCRs as a postdoc in Dr. Mark von Zastrow's lab at the UCSF (2012-2018). I have been at Duke University since 2018, where I am currently an Assistant Professor in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology (primary) and Cell Biology (secondary). My lab interests bridge my trainings in quantitative -omics and cell biology to shed light on signal transduction and its regulation. Outside of managing a lab, I am a mom of two boys and an avid runner.