Anita is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her lab works at the interface of chemical biology, RNA, biomolecular condensates, and AI-powered microscopy.

She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Duke University with Amanda Hargrove, where she developed small molecules targeting the MALAT1 RNA triple helix and helped build R-BIND, a community database of RNA-targeting small molecules. She then trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Clifford P. Brangwynne at Princeton, where she developed Deep-Phase, an AI-powered imaging pipeline that reads functional perturbations directly from condensate morphology.

Outside the lab, Anita enjoys food - growing, making, and eating it - as well as spending time outdoor with her dog Pablo (see below).