Becker came to science late; she was a dance and theater student at the
Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and the
New York University Tisch School of the Arts,[1] and graduated from NYU with a bachelor of fine arts in 1990.[2] After working in theater in New York, she became interested in science through hospital volunteer work, and returned to college in her mid-20s, initially in New York and then transferring to
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She joined the Jet Propulsion Lab while still working towards a second bachelor's degree in physics at Cal Poly Pomona.[1] She completed her degree in 2001,[2] and became a full-time researcher at JPL.[1]
Becker's research on Jupiter has involved taking close-up images of Jupiter's moon
Ganymede,[3] discovering
lightning unexpectedly high in Jupiter's atmosphere,[4] finding a possible explanation for the lightning through
antifreeze-like interactions between water and
ammonia,[4][5][6][7] and studying ammonia-water
hailstorms as a mechanism for ammonia depletion from the upper atmosphere.[4][8][6][7]