 After moving to University of Colorado Boulder, she began to study the development in C. elegans and later went on to graduate with a PhD in animal biology, in 2000.She quickly developed an interest in the science of "Arabidopsis" whilst working as a post-doc at the Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology.Claiming that she was not a "young naturalist", Bergmann was much more interested in constructing things, exploding things and launching things into the air.