Mara is currently a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Clair Sullivan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received a B.S.E in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2013 and an M.S. in Environmental Health Physics from Clemson University in 2015. Her dissertation work involves developing and improving a wavelet-based peak extraction algorithm for radioisotope identification devices (RIID) for treaty verification purposes.