Irene is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Bloomington where is conducting carbohydrate synthetic research under the supervision of Professor Nicola Pohl. Irene obtained her PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville from the research group of Professor David C. Baker. She was an instructional assistant professor at OleMiss for two semesters after graduate school. Irene has been very active with ACS since graduate school where she carried out several outreach chemistry workshops with Dr. Al Hazari. She also received several awards from ACS including the YCC Ciba Young Scientist award, the ACS Leadership award and the Women Chemists Committee award. Irene became a national member of YCC in January 2011 and is serving on the GIO sub-committee.