Kaia, while an undergraduate at Wellesley College majoring in Neuroscience, worked on multiplexed protein imaging with the goal of better understanding the most basic structures of the brain. Prior to Wellesley, she was a member of the Omenetto SilkLab at Tufts University, where she focused on material science and biomedical engineering. There, she developed a functional product for disease identification/therapy and nutrient delivery on paper.