Lydia completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford University where she worked in Dr. Minx Fuller's lab studying Drosophila Development. She pursued her PhD in the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCLA where she worked with Dr. Greg Payne to uncover mechanisms of intracellular vesicle trafficking. She then moved into Neuroscience at the Salk Institute studying how the peripheral nervous system responds to injury, aging and disease. She worked with Dr. Sam Pfaff.