Amanda was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. She earned her A.B. in chemistry at Cornell University, where she did undergraduate research in the laboratory of Prof. James M. Burlitch, synthesizing copper phthalocyanine nanoparticles. She completed her graduate studies in analytical chemistry with Prof. Jonathan V. Sweedler at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her thesis work focused on the development of mass spectrometric and bioinformatic strategies to predict and identify neuropeptides.

Following the completion of her Ph.D. in 2004, Amanda participated in the annotation of the newly sequenced honey bee genome as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Prof. Gene E. Robinson and Prof. Sandra L. Rodriguez-Zas at the University of Illinois. In 2005, Amanda began her position as the Sallie Rosen Kaplen Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Ried. During her time at the NCI, she utilized RNA interference screening techniques followed by microarray analysis to elucidate genes that regulate the viability of colorectal cancer cells. She was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame from 2009-2017.

Currently, Amanda is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Member of the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention group in the Comprehensive Cancer Center at The Ohio State University. She is also the Co-Director of the Proteomics Shared Resource for the OSU Cancer Center.

She previously served on the Board of Directors for the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) as the Member-at-Large for Publications. She has been recognized with awards for both her teaching and research. At Notre Dame, she was awarded the Joyce Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2016 and received the Alumni Teaching Award at OSU in 2021. For research, she has been recognized with a Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh Starter Grant Award, an NSF CAREER award, a Rising Star Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). In 2020, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award and spent Summer/Fall 2021 as a Visiting Professor at the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Muppet: The Swedish Chef