Monica Christine Jackson was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. She obtained a B.S. and M.S. degree in mathematics from Clark Atlanta University. She completed a PhD in applied mathematics and computational science from University of Maryland. After completing her degree at the University of Maryland, she was a post doctoral researcher at Emory University in the department of Biostatistics under the direction of Lance A. Waller. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Statistics at American University. Her current research interest is in the areas of spatial statistics and disease surveillance with applications to developing, investigating methods for detecting cancer clusters, global clustering patterns, and developing simulation algorithms for spatially correlated data.