Jess received a B.S. in biochemistry from UMass Boston in 2017 and an M.S in chemistry in 2019 where she worked in the labs of Prof. Marianna Török and Prof. Daniel Dowling, respectively. Fleeing the Boston winters, Jess drove across the country with her cat, a ripe source of shed whiskers for crystallography experiments, to Los Angeles to pursue her Ph.D. in chemistry. During her PhD, Jess used a combination of crystallography, electron microscopy, and biochemical techniques to study proteins involved in iron acquisition and detoxification in Gram-positive bacteria. Now Jess is investigating mammalian iron regulation.