Connie completed her undergraduate B. S. studies at MIT and the moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where she learned protein biochemistry in the lab of Prof. Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. Her Ph. D. thesis project involved making and characterizing mutant forms of a transmembrane receptor, the E. coli aspartate receptor and using homology modeling to construct a model of the serine receptor ligand binding domain. After completing her Ph. D., Connie moved to Brandeis University where she learned X-ray crystallography as a Cystic Fibrosis Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Greg Petsko and Prof. Dagmar Ringe. Her research included solving several protein structures, including phosphoglucose isomerase (the second enzyme in glycolysis). She also developed the concept/model of Moonlighting Proteins. In the Fall of 1999, she moved to Chicago to start her own lab in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she has been combining her experience with biochemistry and structural biology with studies of both transmembrane and cytosolic proteins. More information of her accomplishments is found in her CV.