Lucy grew up in central Massachusetts and discovered her passion for the ocean in Belize. She attended a small liberal arts college, Eckerd College in St. Petersburg Florida where she obtained her B.S. in Marine Science/Biology. During her time at Eckerd, she researched the population genetics of the Bandtooth conger eel and brown Sargassum snail in the western North Atlantic. In addition, Lucy completed an NSF REU internship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studied the effects of flow and hypoxia on developing squid egg capsules. Lastly, she was a NOAA Hollings Scholar at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami, Florida where she worked on the age and growth of larval blue marlin from Cuba using otolith microscopy.

At KAUST as a member of the Reef Ecology Lab, she hopes to continue her otolith work and combine it with genetic parentage analysis for endemic Red Sea reef fish.