Sarah obtained her B.S. in Biology from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. At Truman, she studied Bacillus subtilis sporulation with Joyce Patrick, and during the summers, she worked in the lab of Colin Nichols at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, researching the structure and function of inward rectifying potassium channels in nanodiscs. Sarah then pursued her PhD in Melanie Ohi's lab at the University of Michigan. Her thesis research focused on two oligomeric membrane proteins, VacA and Caveolin-1. She characterized the membrane insertion mechanism of VacA, Helicobacter pylori's pore-forming toxin, and determined structures of evolutionarily distinct caveolins to guide functional analysis of how human Caveolin-1 induces curvature in membranes. Sarah joined the Alushin lab as a postdoc in 2025, where her current work focuses on understanding the structural basis of the cadherin-catenin complex's multiple levels of force-sensitivity in cell adhesion. Sarah received an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2026.