Catherine received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins and later pursued a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Florida, which is close to her hometown of Tampa.  She later completed her postdoctoral training at UNC-Chapel Hill in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, where she developed an interest in the neurobiology of alcohol use disorders. In April of 2018, she joined the faculty in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa to start her own lab. Her hobbies include hiking, kayaking, traveling and photographing wildlife, one of her favorite subjects being the horseshoe crab.