Dr. Kirkman received her BA in Biology from Swarthmore College. She received her medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine with distinction in research where she spent time as a Howard Hughes Medical Student Research Fellow. Following that, she completed her internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital and fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at New York Presbyterian- Cornell. Post fellowship, she spent time as a post doc in the laboratory of Dr. Kirk Deitsch studying the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Her current research continues to focus on malaria including an NIH funded study of the generation of genetic diversity in this important human pathogen.