After graduation, Melissa joined the bioengineering Ph.D. program at the University of California Riverside.
Graduating in Winter 2010, Melissa was the first B.S. in Bioengineering graduate. She worked on her senior thesis with electrical engineering professor Holger Schmidt in the applied optics laboratory. She received Dean's and Chancellor's Awards for her undergraduate thesis work on improvement of FRET detection on optofluidic chips. In addition to her research and scholarship, Melissa served as co-president of UCSC's Society of Women Engineers chapter.