Kristin Rule Gleitsman discovered her passion for chemistry in 1998 when she enrolled in a general chemistry course at Vassar College. Upon graduation in May of 2002, she took her love of chemistry on the road, first earning an MPhil in Computational Materials Science at the University of Cambridge in England and then studying chemistry at St Petersburg State University in Russia.

In the fall of 2004, Kristin started working towards her PhD at the California Institute of Technology in the lab of Professor Dennis Dougherty, successfully defending her thesis on April 12, 2010.  During her time in graduate school, Kristin was also able to do research in Okazaki, Japan with the NSF EAPSI program. Kristin began post-doctoral work in the lab of Professor Dan Herschlag at Stanford in June 2010, where she studies RNA molecular recognition.