Dr. Hicks received her B.S. in Chemistry at Marshall University, summa cum laude, and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she was the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She was an Assistant Member and Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis prior to assuming her current role as a professor in the Department of Chemistry at UNC.