 She earned a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005.She graduated from Caltech in 2008 with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.In 1999, Hawkins worked as an intern for the Eastman Chemical Company and from 2000 to 2002 she worked again as an intern for the Solutia Inc. From November 2008 to August 8, 2013, she moved to Emeryville, California where she got a job as scientist for metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae at Amyris Inc.