Hui is originally from
California,[3] and majored in physics at
Pomona College, specializing in astrophysics and astronomy and graduating in 2001. She went to the
University of California, Los Angeles for graduate study in history, earning a master's degree in 2003 and completing her Ph.D. in 2008.[4]
She joined the Mississippi State University history department as an assistant professor in 2008, and was promoted to associate professor in 2014.[4] She has traveled to Norway as a
Fulbright Scholar in 2014–2015,[5] and to Germany as an
Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in 2017–2019.[6]
Hui is the author of the
monographThe Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840–1910, published in 2013 by the
MIT Press in their book series Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology.[8] She is also a co-editor of two
edited volumes on sound, Music, Sound, and the Laboratory from 1750-1980 (a special issue of Osiris in 2013) and Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality (
Oxford University Press, 2020).